Colloquia
Jinzhi Lei
CAM COLLOQUIUM
“On Robustness of Morphogen Gradient”
Jinzhi Lei
Tsinghua University and University of California - Irvine
Monday March 31, 2008
4:00PM in 127 Hayes-Healy Center
*TEA – 3:30PM in Math Lounge – 257 Hayes-Healy*
Quasi-stable gradients of signaling protein molecules (known as morphogens or ligands) bound to cell receptors are known to be responsible for differential cell signaling and gene expressions. From these follow different stable cell fates and visually patterned tissues in biological development. Recent studies have shown that the basic biological processes for generating morphogen gradients yield gradients that are sensitive to small changes in system characteristics (such as expression level of morphogens or receptors) or environmental conditions (such as temperature changes). Additional biological activities must play an important role in the high level of robustness observed in embryonic
patterning for example. Evidences have been found that nonsignaling cell surface bound molecules (such as heparan sulfate proteoglygans) are important for cell fates. In this talk, we will provides a theoretical basis for
above observations. A mechanism is proposed to form morphogen gradient which is long distant, multiple-fate and robust when the synthesis rate of morphogen is changed (for example, due to mutation).
