Dresden 2009 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 8: Developmental Processes
BP 8.5: Vortrag
Dienstag, 24. März 2009, 11:00–11:15, HÜL 186
Optimal precision of noisy gene expression domains — •Thorsten Erdmann1, Martin Howard2, and Pieter Rein ten Wolde1 — 1FOM Institute Amolf, Amsterdam, The Netherlands — 2John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom
During early embryonic development, the body plan of the adult fruit fly is laid out by spatial patterns of gene expression. To form a viable organism different domains need to be reliably separated against the adverse influence of stochastic noise. A prominent example is the domain of the Hunchback protein. The production of Hunchback proteins is activated by a fluctuating morphogen gradient. In addition, the rate of protein production is subject to strong fluctuations. We theoretically study the spatial positioning of the Hunchback domain boundary for fluctuating protein concentrations. We find that the interplay between spatial and temporal averaging leads to an optimal precision for the Hunchback boundary as a function of protein lifetime. Moreover, the Hunchback domain boundary can be determined with better accuracy than the noisy input.