ArticleCurrent biology : CB2013
Quantitative imaging of transcription in living Drosophila embryos links polymerase activity to patterning.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 213 papers.
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213 citing papers in PubMed.
- Insulators As Dynamic, Tunable Regulators of Enhancer-Promoter Coordination in LivingbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Notch-mediated lateral inhibition is shaped by morphological differences to reinforce bias toward signal-sending or -receiving roles.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Single-cell transcriptional dynamics in a living vertebrate.Cell systems · 2026Article
- Enhancer RNA transcription near segmentation gene enhancers can be analyzed in situ using FISH.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- Maternal patterning in early Drosophila embryos: how much information can single maternal gradients supply?Development (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- Enhancer placement impacts transcriptional dynamics in Drosophila embryos.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Decoupling between activation time and steady-state level in input-output responses.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Signal control during tissue regeneration in adult animals.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2026Review
- Identification of optimal fluorophores for use in theMolecular biology of the cell · 2026Article
- A single cluster of RNA Polymerase II molecules is stably associated with active genes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Direct observation of Notch signaling-induced transcription hubs mediating gene-expression responses.Science advances · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous NF-κB activation and enhancer features shape transcription in Drosophila immunity.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- RNA polymerase II initiation factors show different dynamic behaviour upon induced transcription in live cells.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A mitotic bookmark coordinates transcription and replication in Drosophila embryos.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Machine Learning-Driven Prediction of Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Active Nuclei DuringInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- A conserved coupling of transcriptional ON and OFF periods underlies bursting dynamics.Nature structural & molecular biology · 2025Article
- A single cluster of RNA Polymerase II molecules is stably associated with active genes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Decoupling between activation time and steady-state level in input-output responses.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Timing is everything: transcription bursting in development.Genes & development · 2025Review
- Bicoid-nucleosome competition sets a concentration threshold for transcription constrained by genome replication.Cell reports · 2025Article
153 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression are fundamental to every developmental program. The resulting macroscopic domains have been mainly characterized by their levels of gene products. However, the establishment of such patterns results from differences in the dynamics of microscopic events in individual cells such as transcription. It is unclear how these microscopic decisions lead to macroscopic patterns, as measurements in fixed tissue cannot access the underlying transcriptional dynamics. In vivo transcriptional dynamics have long been approached in single-celled organisms, but never in a multicellular developmental context. Here, we directly address how boundaries of gene expression emerge in the Drosophila embryo by measuring the absolute number of actively transcribing polymerases in real time in individual nuclei. Specifically, we show that the formation of a boundary cannot be quantitatively explained by the rate of mRNA production in each cell, but instead requires amplification of the dynamic range of the expression boundary. This amplification is accomplished by nuclei randomly adopting active or inactive states of transcription, leading to a collective effect where the fraction of active nuclei is modulated in space. Thus, developmental patterns are not just the consequence of reproducible transcriptional dynamics in individual nuclei, but are the result of averaging expression over space and time.
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