title: Morphogenesis at criticality.
abstract: Spatial patterns in the early fruit fly embryo emerge from a network of interactions among transcription factors, the gap genes, driven by maternal inputs. Such networks can exhibit many qualitatively different behaviors, separated by critical surfaces. At criticality, we should observe strong correlations in the fluctuations of different genes around their mean expression levels, a slowing of the dynamics along some but not all directions in the space of possible expression levels, correlations of expression fluctuations over long distances in the embryo, and departures from a Gaussian distribution of these fluctuations. Analysis of recent experiments on the gap gene network shows that all these signatures are observed, and that the different signatures are related in ways predicted by theory. Although there might be other explanations for these individual phenomena, the confluence of evidence suggests that this genetic network is tuned to criticality.
authors: Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544.
authors: Dmitry
authors: D
authors: Krotov
authors: Julien O
authors: JO
authors: Dubuis
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Gregor
authors: William
authors: W
authors: Bialek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004330:Drosophila / Q000502:physiology*; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000502:physiology; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental / Q000502:physiology*; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks / Q000502:physiology*; D051741:Kruppel-Like Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D008954:Models, Biological; D009024:Morphogenesis / Q000502:physiology*; D013816:Thermodynamics; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; C497244:Kr protein, Drosophila; D051741:Kruppel-Like Transcription Factors; D014157:Transcription Factors; C061245:hb protein, Drosophila
keywords: Drosophila embryo; genetic networks