Abstract

Co-author: Qing Nie (UC Irvine)

Morphogens provide positional information for spatial patterns of gene expression during development. However, stochastic effects such as local fluctuations in morphogen concentration and noise in signal transduction make it difficult for cells to respond to their positions accurately enough to generate sharp boundaries between gene expression domains. In this talk, I will present a novel noise attenuation mechanism during the development of spatial pattern. First, we investigate the boundary sharpening in the zebrafish hindbrain. Computational analyses of spatial stochastic models show, surprisingly, that a combination of noise in RA concentration and noise in hoxb1a/krox20 expression promotes sharpening of boundaries between adjacent segments. Second, we integrate spatial and temporal noise attenuation in the BMP -FGF signaling network in the dorsal telencephalon. We demonstrate that perturbing FGF signaling transiently will lead to a noisier boundary with loss of boundary s harpness and a global delay in development.