Scale invariance in early embryonic development

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nikolić, Miloš, Antonetti, Victoria, Liu, Feng, Muhaxheri, Gentian, Petkova, Mariela D., Scheeler, Martin, Smith, Eric M., Bialek, William, Gregor, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Nikolić, Miloš
Antonetti, Victoria
Liu, Feng
Muhaxheri, Gentian
Petkova, Mariela D.
Scheeler, Martin
Smith, Eric M.
Bialek, William
Gregor, Thomas
author_facet Nikolić, Miloš
Antonetti, Victoria
Liu, Feng
Muhaxheri, Gentian
Petkova, Mariela D.
Scheeler, Martin
Smith, Eric M.
Bialek, William
Gregor, Thomas
contents The body plan of the fruit fly is determined by the expression of just a handful of genes. We show that the spatial patterns of expression for several of these genes scale precisely with the size of the embryo. Concretely, discrete positional markers such as the peaks in striped patterns have absolute positions along the anterior-posterior axis that are proportional to embryo length, with better than 1% accuracy. Further, the information (in bits) that graded patterns of expression provide about position can be decomposed into information about fractional or scaled position and information about absolute position or embryo length; all of the available information is about scaled position, again with ~1% accuracy. These observations suggest that the underlying genetic network exhibits scale invariance in a deeper mathematical sense. Taking this mathematical statement seriously requires that the network dynamics have a zero mode, which connects to many other observations on this system.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_17684
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scale invariance in early embryonic development
Nikolić, Miloš
Antonetti, Victoria
Liu, Feng
Muhaxheri, Gentian
Petkova, Mariela D.
Scheeler, Martin
Smith, Eric M.
Bialek, William
Gregor, Thomas
Molecular Networks
Pattern Formation and Solitons
Biological Physics
The body plan of the fruit fly is determined by the expression of just a handful of genes. We show that the spatial patterns of expression for several of these genes scale precisely with the size of the embryo. Concretely, discrete positional markers such as the peaks in striped patterns have absolute positions along the anterior-posterior axis that are proportional to embryo length, with better than 1% accuracy. Further, the information (in bits) that graded patterns of expression provide about position can be decomposed into information about fractional or scaled position and information about absolute position or embryo length; all of the available information is about scaled position, again with ~1% accuracy. These observations suggest that the underlying genetic network exhibits scale invariance in a deeper mathematical sense. Taking this mathematical statement seriously requires that the network dynamics have a zero mode, which connects to many other observations on this system.
title Scale invariance in early embryonic development
topic Molecular Networks
Pattern Formation and Solitons
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17684