Morphogenesis at criticality.

Publication Year
2014

Type

Journal Article
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.

Journal
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Volume
111
Issue
10
Pages
3683-8
Date Published
03/2014
Alternate Journal
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.