FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Dec 18;103(25):258101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.258101. Epub 2009 Dec 17.
During embryonic development, differentiating cells respond via gene expression to positional cues from morphogen gradients. While gene expression is often highly erratic, embryonic development is precise. We show by theory and simulations that diffusion of the expressed protein can enhance the precision of its expression domain. While diffusion lessens the sharpness of the expression boundary, it also reduces super-Poissonian noise by washing out bursts of gene expression. Balancing these effects yields an optimal diffusion constant maximizing the precision of the expression domain.
在胚胎发育过程中，分化细胞通过基因表达对形态发生梯度的位置线索做出反应。虽然基因表达通常非常不稳定，但胚胎发育却是精确的。我们通过理论和模拟表明，表达蛋白的扩散可以增强其表达域的精度。虽然扩散会降低表达边界的锐度，但它也通过冲刷基因表达的爆发来减少超泊松噪声。平衡这些效果会产生一个最佳扩散常数，从而最大限度地提高表达域的精度。
