Title: Organism-scale modeling of early Drosophila patterning via Bone
Morphogenetic Proteins

Abstract:

Mathematical models of embryonic development are formulated to
illuminate how the spatio-temporal expression of genes that presages
the adult body plan of an organism is controlled, but many have
limited utility because they oversimplify crucial aspects such as the
geometry, the molecular mechanisms, and other components in the system
being modeled. To circumvent these limitations we developed a data-
driven, 3D, organism-scale model of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-
mediated embryonic patterning in Drosophila.  We tested 7 different
receptor/feedback mechanisms and 8 different geometry/gene expression
scenarios for their ability to reproduce the mean distributions of
pMad signaling in both wild-type and more than twenty different mutant
embryos.  We found that positive feedback of a secreted BMP binding
protein, coupled with the measured embryo geometry, provides the best
agreement between model and experiment. The inclusion of all important
factors in a 3D model represents a significant step forward in the
systems biology of development.