A Toggle-Switch and a Feed-Forward Loop Engage in the Control of the Drosophila Retinal Determination Gene Network

Máximo Sánchez-Aragón,Julia Cantisán-Gómez,Carlos M Luque,Catarina Brás-Pereira,Carla S Lopes,M Carmen Lemos,Fernando Casares

doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00221

Abstract

This work was funded by MINECO and the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) of Spain, co-financed by FEDER funds (EU) through grants BFU2012-34324 and BFU2015-66040-P to FC, MDM-2016-0687 in which FC is participant researcher, and TIN2017-89842 P in which MCL is participant researcher.

Highlights

During organ development, specification of cell fates depends on gene regulatory networks (GRNs)
GRNs operating during organ development must account for several biological phenomena: the generation of patterns of gene expression in space and time and the reliability in the generation of these patterns
In order to reproduce qualitatively the gene expression profiles obtained experimentally, we modeled the dynamics of the concentrations of the key transcription factors of the retinal determination gene network (RDGN) using coupled differential equations

Summary

Introduction

Specification of cell fates depends on gene regulatory networks (GRNs). These GRNs represent as directed graphs biochemical reactions that result in changes in gene expression (mRNA and protein production), which control cell function. Nodes represent transcription factors (TFs) that regulate further tiers of genes, and the links connecting the Network Motifs Controlling Drosophila Eye nodes represent the activation/repression action of TFs on their target genes. Extracellular signals modify the activation/repression rates and thereby are key modulators of the dynamics of these GRNs. In general, GRNs operating during organ development must account for several biological phenomena: the generation of patterns of gene expression in space and time and the reliability in the generation of these patterns (i.e., robustness). Variations in the GRN of a particular organ underlie the evolutionary changes in the morphology and function of this organ (Levine and Davidson, 2005; Smith et al, 2018)

Methods

Results

Conclusion