ArticleJournal of biological physics2012
Improved readout precision of the Bicoid morphogen gradient by early decoding.
Article in Journal of biological physics, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part Two.Biological theory · 2026Article
- Implications of diffusion and time-varying morphogen gradients for the dynamic positioning and precision of bistable gene expression boundaries.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Physical Limits on the Precision of Mitotic Spindle Positioning by Microtubule Pushing forces: Mechanics of mitotic spindle positioning.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2017Review
- The Mitotic Spindle in the One-Cell C. elegans Embryo Is Positioned with High Precision and Stability.Biophysical journal · 2016Article
- The organelle of differentiation in embryos: the cell state splitter.Theoretical biology & medical modelling · 2016Review
- Morphogen rules: design principles of gradient-mediated embryo patterning.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2015Review
- Spatiotemporal analysis of different mechanisms for interpreting morphogen gradients.Biophysical journal · 2015Article
- Utilization of extracellular information before ligand-receptor binding reaches equilibrium expands and shifts the input dynamic range.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2014Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Transcription factors (TFs) bind to specific DNA sequences to induce or repress gene expression. Expression levels can be tuned by changing TF concentrations, but the precision of such tuning is limited, since the fraction of time a TF occupies its binding site is subject to stochastic fluctuations. Bicoid (Bcd) is a TF that patterns the early Drosophila embryo by establishing an anterior-to-posterior concentration gradient and activating specific gene targets ("gap genes") in a concentration-dependent manner. Recently, the Bcd gradient and its in-vivo diffusion were quantified in live embryos, raising a quandary: the precision by which the Bcd target genes are defined (one-cell resolution) appeared to exceed the physical limits set by the stochastic binding of Bcd to DNA. We hypothesize that early readout of Bcd could account for the observed precision. Specifically, we consider the possibility that gap genes begin to be expressed earlier than typically measured experimentally, at a time when the distance between the nuclei is large. At this time, the difference in Bcd concentration between adjacent nuclei is large, enabling better tolerance for measurement imprecision. We show that such early decoding can indeed increase the accuracy of gap-gene expression, and that the initial pattern can be stabilized during subsequent divisions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.