Fundamental origins and limits for scaling a maternal morphogen gradient

Feng He, Chuanxian Wei, Honggang Wu, David Cheung, Renjie Jiao and Jun Ma ()
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Feng He: Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation
Chuanxian Wei: Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation
Honggang Wu: Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation
David Cheung: Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation
Renjie Jiao: State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jun Ma: Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Tissue expansion and patterning are integral to development; however, it is unknown quantitatively how a mother accumulates molecular resources to invest in the future of instructing robust embryonic patterning. Here we develop a model, Tissue Expansion-Modulated Maternal Morphogen Scaling (TEM3S), to study scaled anterior–posterior patterning in Drosophila embryos. Using both ovaries and embryos, we measure a core quantity of the model, the scaling power of the Bicoid (Bcd) morphogen gradient’s amplitude nA. We also evaluate directly model-derived predictions about Bcd gradient and patterning properties. Our results show that scaling of the Bcd gradient in the embryo originates from, and is constrained fundamentally by, a dynamic relationship between maternal tissue expansion and bcd gene copy number expansion in the ovary. This delicate connection between the two transitioning stages of a life cycle, stemming from a finite value of nA~3, underscores a key feature of developmental systems depicted by TEM3S.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7679

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