Physiological Model of Gene Regulation in Drosophila

描述（由申请人提供）：相互作用的基因网络控制一个 各种基本的生物过程，包括胚胎发育， 细胞分裂和细胞死亡了解整个网络的功能 控制发育的基因是功能基因组学的核心问题。 虽然解决这个问题的通用技术还不存在，但它可以 今天解决了控制分割系统的基因网络， 果蝇我们的研究设计包括一个综合方案 实验和计算模型，我们将使用它们来 描述在母体中编码的位置信息 梯度被转换成精确和稳定的表达的部分 在条纹中有一个核的极性基因是enrailed（en）和wingless（emwg）， 宽度.拟议的工作将导致一个现实的和预测性的描述 粗粒水平上形态发生场中图案形成的规律 化学动力学 我们的具体目标是：1）构建一个描述 从母体胚胎发育中分割基因表达模式的演变 渐变到wg和en表达的条纹。2)利用这个模型， 了解每个分段基因的每个表达域如何形成， 以及何时发生为了使我们的数据和工具广泛可用，我们建议3） 完成一个网站的建设，并在网上公开提供， 以细胞分辨率分割基因表达的定量数据库 和仿真应用服务器。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Networks of interacting genes control a variety of fundamental biological processes, including embryonic development, cell division, and cell death. Understanding the function of an entire network of genes that control development is a central problem of functional genomics. Although general technology to solve the problem does not yet exist, it can be solved today for the network of genes that control the segmentation system of Drosophila melanogaster. Our research design consists of an integrated program of experimentation and computational modeling, which we will use to characterize the process by which positional information encoded in maternal gradients is transformed into precise and stable expression of the segment polarity genes engrailed (en) and wingless (em wg) in stripes one nucleus in width. The work proposed will result in a realistic and predictive description of pattern formation in morphogenetic field at the level of coarse-grained chemical kinetics. Our specific aims are to 1) Construct a chemical kinetic model describing the evolution of the expression patterns of the segmentation genes from maternal gradients to stripes of wg and en expression. 2) Use this model to precisely understand how each expression domain of every segmentation gene forms where and when it does. To make our data and tools widely available, we propose to 3) Complete the construction of, and make publicly available on the web, a quantitative database of segmentation gene expression at cellular resolution and a simulation application server.