Finding the Center Reliably: Robust Patterns of Developmental Gene Expression

Martin Howard and Pieter Rein ten Wolde
Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 208103 – Published 9 November 2005

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 corepressor from the posterior. The corepressor 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 corepressor. Using mathematical modeling, we show that a symmetric activator-corepressor model can quantitatively explain the precise midembryo expression boundary of the hunchback gene, and the scaling of this pattern with embryo size.

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  • Received 18 February 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.208103

©2005 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Martin Howard1 and Pieter Rein ten Wolde2

  • 1Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
  • 2FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF), Kruislaan 407, 1098 SJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 20 — 11 November 2005

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