Finding the center reliably: robust patterns of developmental gene expression

Abstract

We investigate a mechanism for the robust identification of the center of a developing biological system. We assume the existence of two morphogen gradients, an activator emanating from the anterior, and a co-repressor from the posterior. The co-repressor inhibits the action of the activator in switching on target genes. We apply this system to Drosophila embryos, where we predict the existence of a hitherto undetected posterior co-repressor. Using mathematical modelling, we show that a symmetric activator-co-repressor model can quantitatively explain the precise mid-embryo expression boundary of the hunchback gene, and the scaling of this pattern with embryo size.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Robust formation of morphogen gradients
• Morphogen Gradient from a Noisy Source

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Fundamental Limits to Position Determination by Concentration Gradients
• The role of spatial averaging in the precision of gene expression patterns
• Embryonic Pattern Scaling Achieved by Oppositely Directed Morphogen Gradients
• Mutual Repression enhances the Steepness and Precision of Gene Expression Boundaries
• Morphogen Transport in Epithelia
• Scale invariance in early embryonic development