Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2011 Dec;23(6):663-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2011.09.005. Epub 2011 Sep 29.
The patterning of multicellular organisms is robust to environmental, genetic, or stochastic fluctuations. Mathematical modeling is instrumental in identifying mechanisms supporting this robustness. The principle of lateral inhibition, whereby a differentiating cell inhibits its neighbors from adopting the same fate, is frequently used for selecting a single cell out of a cluster of equipotent cells. For example, Sensory Organ Precursors (SOP) in the fruit-fly Drosophila implement lateral inhibition by activating the Notch-Delta pathway. We discuss parameters affecting the rate of errors in this process, and the mechanism (inhibitory cis interaction between Notch and Delta) predicted to reduce this error.
多细胞生物的模式形成对环境、遗传或随机波动具有稳健性。数学建模对于确定支持这种稳健性的机制至关重要。侧向抑制原则，即分化细胞抑制其相邻细胞采用相同命运，常用于从一群具有同等潜力的细胞中选择单个细胞。例如，果蝇中的感觉器官前体细胞（SOP）通过激活 Notch-Delta 途径来实施侧向抑制。我们讨论了影响该过程中错误率的参数，以及预测可降低此错误率的机制（Notch 和 Delta 之间的抑制性顺式相互作用）。
