Dataset Information

Stable, precise, and reproducible patterning of bicoid and hunchback molecules in the early Drosophila embryo.

ABSTRACT: Precise patterning of morphogen molecules and their accurate reading out are of key importance in embryonic development. Recent experiments have visualized distributions of proteins in developing embryos and shown that the gradient of concentration of Bicoid morphogen in Drosophila embryos is established rapidly after fertilization and remains stable through syncytial mitoses. This stable Bicoid gradient is read out in a precise way to distribute Hunchback with small fluctuations in each embryo and in a reproducible way, with small embryo-to-embryo fluctuation. The mechanisms of such stable, precise, and reproducible patterning through noisy cellular processes, however, still remain mysterious. To address these issues, here we develop the one- and three-dimensional stochastic models of the early Drosophila embryo. The simulated results show that the fluctuation in expression of the hunchback gene is dominated by the random arrival of Bicoid at the hunchback enhancer. Slow diffusion of Hunchback protein, however, averages out this intense fluctuation, leading to the precise patterning of distribution of Hunchback without loss of sharpness of the boundary of its distribution. The coordinated rates of diffusion and transport of input Bicoid and output Hunchback play decisive roles in suppressing fluctuations arising from the dynamical structure change in embryos and those arising from the random diffusion of molecules, and give rise to the stable, precise, and reproducible patterning of Bicoid and Hunchback distributions.

SUBMITTER: Okabe-Oho Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2720536 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Stable, precise, and reproducible patterning of bicoid and hunchback molecules in the early Drosophila embryo.

Okabe-Oho Yurie Y Murakami Hiroki H Oho Suguru S Sasai Masaki M

PLoS computational biology 20090828 8

Precise patterning of morphogen molecules and their accurate reading out are of key importance in embryonic development. Recent experiments have visualized distributions of proteins in developing embryos and shown that the gradient of concentration of Bicoid morphogen in Drosophila embryos is established rapidly after fertilization and remains stable through syncytial mitoses. This stable Bicoid gradient is read out in a precise way to distribute Hunchback with small fluctuations in each embryo ...[more]

PMID: 19714200

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Project description:In early development, genes are expressed in spatial patterns which later define cellular identities and tissue locations. The mechanisms of such pattern formation have been studied extensively in early Drosophila (fruit fly) embryos. The gap gene hunchback (hb) is one of the earliest genes to be expressed in anterior-posterior (AP) body segmentation. As a transcriptional regulator for a number of downstream genes, the spatial precision of hb expression can have significant effects in the development of the body plan. To investigate the factors contributing to hb precision, we used fine spatial and temporal resolution data to develop a quantitative model for the regulation of hb expression in the mid-embryo. In particular, modelling hb pattern refinement in mid nuclear cleavage cycle 14 (NC14) reveals some of the regulatory contributions of simultaneously-expressed gap genes. Matching the model to recent data from wild-type (WT) embryos and mutants of the gap gene Krüppel (Kr) indicates that a mid-embryo Hb concentration peak important in thoracic development (at parasegment 4, PS4) is regulated in a dual manner by Kr, with low Kr concentration activating hb and high Kr concentration repressing hb. The processes of gene expression (transcription, translation, transport) are intrinsically random. We used stochastic simulations to characterize the noise generated in hb expression. We find that Kr regulation can limit the positional variability of the Hb mid-embryo border. This has been recently corroborated in experimental comparisons of WT and Kr- mutant embryos. Further, Kr regulation can decrease uncertainty in mid-embryo hb expression (i.e. contribute to a smooth Hb boundary) and decrease between-copy transcriptional variability within nuclei. Since many tissue boundaries are first established by interactions between neighbouring gene expression domains, these properties of Hb-Kr dynamics to diminish the effects of intrinsic expression noise may represent a general mechanism contributing to robustness in early development.

Project description:BACKGROUND:During development, embryos decode maternal morphogen inputs into highly precise zygotic gene expression. The discovery of the morphogen Bicoid and its profound effect on developmental programming in the Drosophila embryo has been a cornerstone in understanding the decoding of maternal inputs. Bicoid has been described as a classical morphogen that forms a concentration gradient along the antero-posterior axis of the embryo by diffusion and initiates expression of target genes in a concentration-dependent manner in the syncytial blastoderm. Recent work has emphasized the stability of the Bicoid gradient as a function of egg length and the role of nuclear dynamics in maintaining the Bicoid gradient. Bicoid and nuclear dynamics were observed but not modulated under the ideal conditions used previously. Therefore, it has not been tested explicitly whether a temporally stable Bicoid gradient prior to cellularization is required for precise patterning. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Here, we modulate both nuclear dynamics and the Bicoid gradient using laminar flows of different temperature in a microfluidic device to determine if stability of the Bicoid gradient prior to cellularization is essential for precise patterning. Dramatic motion of both cytoplasm and nuclei was observed prior to cellularization, and the Bicoid gradient was disrupted by nuclear motion and was highly abnormal as a function of egg length. Despite an abnormal Bicoid gradient during cycles 11-13, Even-skipped patterning in these embryos remained precise. CONCLUSIONS:These results indicate that the stability of the Bicoid gradient as a function of egg length is nonessential during syncytial blastoderm stages. Further, presumably no gradient formed by simple diffusion on the scale of egg length could be responsible for the robust antero-posterior patterning observed, as severe cytoplasmic and nuclear motion would disrupt such a gradient. Additional mechanisms for how the embryo could sense its dimensions and interpret the Bicoid gradient are discussed.

Project description:During embryonic development, the positional information provided by concentration gradients of maternal factors directs pattern formation by providing spatially dependent cues for gene expression. In the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a classic example of this is the sharp on-off activation of the hunchback (hb) gene at midembryo, in response to local concentrations of the smooth anterior-posterior Bicoid (Bcd) gradient. The regulatory region for hb contains multiple binding sites for the Bcd protein as well as multiple binding sites for the Hb protein. Some previous studies have suggested that Bcd is sufficient for properly sharpened Hb expression, yet other evidence suggests a need for additional regulation. We experimentally quantified the dynamics of hb gene expression in flies that were wild-type, were mutant for hb self-regulation or Bcd binding, or contained an artificial promoter construct consisting of six Bcd and two Hb sites. In addition to these experiments, we developed a reaction-diffusion model of hb transcription, with Bcd cooperative binding and hb self-regulation, and used Zero Eigenvalue Analysis to look for multiple stationary states in the reaction network. Our model reproduces the hb developmental dynamics and correctly predicts the mutant patterns. Analysis of our model indicates that the Hb sharpness can be produced by spatial bistability, in which hb self-regulation produces two stable levels of expression. In the absence of self-regulation, the bistable behavior vanishes and Hb sharpness is disrupted. Bcd cooperative binding affects the position where bistability occurs but is not itself sufficient for a sharp Hb pattern. Our results show that the control of Hb sharpness and positioning, by hb self-regulation and Bcd cooperativity, respectively, are separate processes that can be altered independently. Our model, which matches the changes in Hb position and sharpness observed in different experiments, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the data and in particular indicates that spatial bistability can play a central role in threshold-dependent reading mechanisms of positional information.

Dataset Information

Stable, precise, and reproducible patterning of bicoid and hunchback molecules in the early Drosophila embryo.

Publications

Stable, precise, and reproducible patterning of bicoid and hunchback molecules in the early Drosophila embryo.

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