SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR
QBI/GEDD
Friday, November 6 at 11:30am
Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.
Refreshments at 11:15
David Umulis
Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Organism-scale Modeling of Early Drosophila Patterning Via Bone Morphogenetic Proteins
Advances in image acquisition and informatics technology have led to organism-scale spatio-temporal atlases of gene expression and protein distributions. To maximize the utility of this information for the
study of developmental processes, a new generation of mathematical models is needed for discovery and hypothesis testing. Here we develop a data-driven, geometrically-accurate, model of early Drosophila embryonic bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-mediated patterning.
We tested seven different mechanisms for signal transduction with feedback, eight combinations of geometry and gene expression prepatterns, and two scale-invariance mechanisms for their ability to reproduce proper BMP signaling output in wild-type and mutant
embryos. We found that a model based on positive feedback of a secreted BMP binding protein, coupled with the experimentally-measured embryo geometry, provides the best agreement with population-mean image data. Our results demonstrate that using bioimages
to build and optimize a 3D model provides significant new insights into mechanisms that guide tissue patterning.
Helen Geiger
Administrative Assistant
Quantitative Biology Initiative/
Gene Expression in Development & Disease
Michigan State University
502B Biochemistry Building
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-9895
Fax: (517) 353-9334
E-mail:
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Web:
http://qbmi.msu.edu
http://www.bch.msu.edu/GEDD/index.htm