title: The embryo as a laboratory: quantifying transcription in Drosophila.
abstract: Transcriptional regulation of gene expression is fundamental to most cellular processes, including determination of cellular fates. Quantitative studies of transcription in cultured cells have led to significant advances in identifying mechanisms underlying transcriptional control. Recent progress allowed implementation of these same quantitative methods in multicellular organisms to ask how transcriptional regulation unfolds both in vivo and at the single molecule level in the context of embryonic development. Here we review some of these advances in early Drosophila development, which bring the embryo on par with its single celled counterparts. In particular, we discuss progress in methods to measure mRNA and protein distributions in fixed and living embryos, and we highlight some initial applications that lead to fundamental new insights about molecular transcription processes. We end with an outlook on how to further exploit the unique advantages that come with investigating transcriptional control in the multicellular context of development.
authors.affiliation: Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 085444, USA; Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Electronic address: tg2@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gregor
authors.affiliation: Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 085444, USA.
authors.forename: Hernan G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Shawn C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Little
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism*; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors
keywords: embryogenesis; gene regulatory networks; live imaging; quantitative biology; single molecule FISH