Shaping the scaling characteristics of gap gene expression patterns in Drosophila
Ruoqing Xu,
Fei Dai,
Honggang Wu,
Renjie Jiao,
Feng He,
Jun Ma
Affiliations
Ruoqing Xu
Women's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China; Institute of Genetics, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China
Fei Dai
Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Honggang Wu
Sino-French Hoffmann Institute, School of Basic Medical Science, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510182, China; Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Renjie Jiao
Sino-French Hoffmann Institute, School of Basic Medical Science, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510182, China; Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Feng He
Women's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China; Institute of Genetics, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China; Corresponding author. Women's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China.
Jun Ma
Women's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China; Institute of Genetics, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China; Joint Institute of Genetics and Genome Medicine between Zhejiang University and University of Toronto, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China; Corresponding author. Women's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China.
How patterns are formed to scale with tissue size remains an unresolved problem. Here we investigate embryonic patterns of gap gene expression along the anterior-posterior (AP) axis in Drosophila. We use embryos that greatly differ in length and, importantly, possess distinct length-scaling characteristics of the Bicoid (Bcd) gradient. We systematically analyze the dynamic movements of gap gene expression boundaries in relation to both embryo length and Bcd input as a function of time. We document the process through which such dynamic movements drive both an emergence of a global scaling landscape and evolution of boundary-specific scaling characteristics. We show that, despite initial differences in pattern scaling characteristics that mimic those of Bcd in the anterior, such characteristics of final patterns converge. Our study thus partitions the contributions of Bcd input and regulatory dynamics inherent to the AP patterning network in shaping embryonic pattern's scaling characteristics.
