Periodic Reporting for period 4 - QUANTPATTERN (Quantitative analysis of Nodal/Lefty-mediated pattern formation)
Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2020-06-30
It has been proposed that the two developmental signals Nodal and Lefty form a reaction-diffusion system during tissue patterning. Within the QUANTPATTERN project, we focused on three key questions about how the Nodal/Lefty system leads to patterning. First, how do activator/inhibitor pairs such as Nodal and Lefty achieve their different diffusivities despite their high sequence similarity and similar molecular weights? Second, how does the range of reaction-diffusion systems such as Nodal and Lefty adjust to natural fluctuations in embryo size? Finally, how do reaction-systems such as Nodal and Lefty self-organize to induce spatially restricted tissues in the absence of pre-patterns?
The QUANTPATTERN project used a combination of quantitative experimental and theoretical approaches to address these questions and had three major aims:
Aim 1: Identify the factors regulating the dispersal of Nodal and Lefty during zebrafish development
Aim 2: Determine how the Nodal/Lefty system mediates scale-invariant patterning of zebrafish embryos
Aim 3: Quantitative analysis of self-organized patterning in mouse embryonic stem cells