RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Speeding up anterior-posterior patterning of insects by differential initialization of the gap gene cascade
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 485151
DO 10.1101/485151
A1 Heike Rudolf
A1 Christine Zellner
A1 Ezzat El-Sherif
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/02/485151.abstract
AB Recently, it was shown that anterior-posterior patterning genes in the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum are expressed sequentially in waves. However, in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an insect with a derived mode of embryogenesis compared to Tribolium, anterior-posterior patterning genes quickly and simultaneously arise as mature gene expression domains that, afterwards, undergo slight posterior-to-anterior shifts. This raises the question of how a fast and simultaneous mode of patterning, like that of Drosophila, could have evolved from a rather slow sequential mode of patterning, like that of Tribolium. In this paper, we elucidate a mechanism for this evolutionary transition based on a switch from a uniform to a gradient-mediated initialization of the gap gene cascade by maternal Hb. The model is supported by computational analyses and experiments.