Cells find their identity using a mathematically optimal strategy
Thursday, January 31, 2019 - 11:30
in Biology & Nature
Organisms are made of many types of cells arranged in a precise and reproducible spatial pattern that gives rise to properly formed and well-functioning tissues and organs. But how do genetically identical cells in an organism become differentiated? A team of researchers, including Gašper Tkačik at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), has now shown that in the developing fruit fly, expression levels of four genes, the so-called gap genes, can be jointly decoded into an optimal specification of position. This is the result of a study published today in Cell, by senior author Thomas Gregor, Eric Wieschaus, William Bialek, Mariela Petkova and Gašper Tkačik.