Landscape reveals critical network structures for sharpening gene expression boundaries.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Spatial pattern formation is a critical issue in developmental biology. Gene expression boundary sharpening has been observed from both experiments and modeling simulations. However, the mechanism to determine the sharpness of the boundary is not fully elucidated. RESULTS:We investigated the boundary sharpening resulted by three biological motifs, interacting with morphogens, and uncovered their probabilistic landscapes. The landscape view, along with calculated average switching time between attractors, provides a natural explanation for the boundary sharpening behavior relying on the noise induced gene state switchings. To possess boundary sharpening potential, a gene network needs to generate an asymmetric bistable state, i.e. one of the two stable states is less stable than

SUBMITTER: Li C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6001026 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature