RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Stochastic gene expression is optimized to drive developmental self-organization
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 546911
DO 10.1101/546911
A1 Ritika Giri
A1 Dimitrios K. Papadopoulos
A1 Diana M. Posadas
A1 Hemanth K. Potluri
A1 Pavel Tomancak
A1 Madhav Mani
A1 Richard W. Carthew
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/05/546911.abstract
AB Self-organization of cells into tissue patterns is a design principle in developmental biology to create order from disorder. However, order must emerge from biochemical processes within and between cells that are stochastic. Here, we measure noise in expression of the Drosophila senseless gene, a key determinant of sensory cell fate. We show that translation and transcription of senseless produce distinct signatures of protein noise. Repression of senseless by a microRNA uniformly decreases both protein abundance and noise in cells, but does so without affecting the fidelity of self-organization. In contrast, the genomic location of senseless affects protein noise without affecting protein abundance. When noise is greater, tissue patterning is significantly disordered. This suggests that gene expression stochasticity, independent of expression level, is a critical feature that must be constrained during development to allow cells to efficiently and accurately self-organize.