Gene Regulation: Boundaries within Limits

Gene Regulation: Boundaries within Limits

Quantitative measurements of the Hunchback transcription factor in Drosophila embryos show that its target genes can respond with a high degree of precision to the exact level of the protein, simulating a continuous, analog readout, while other target genes show a combinatorial effect, resembling a Boolean logic element.

Knowledge, limits and boundaries

In this paper the underlying concern is the problem of knowledge. How do we understand the world, what is ‘scientific’ knowledge, and to what extent is this knowledge limited by the fact that the world in which we live is complex? The problems associated with the status of our knowledge of the world have been central to philosophy all along. Here I will focus on the way in which the acknowledge...

CTCF-mediated topological boundaries during development foster appropriate gene regulation

Intrinsic limits to gene regulation by global crosstalk

Gene regulation relies on the specificity of transcription factor (TF)-DNA interactions. Limited specificity may lead to crosstalk: a regulatory state in which a gene is either incorrectly activated due to noncognate TF-DNA interactions or remains erroneously inactive. As each TF can have numerous interactions with noncognate cis-regulatory elements, crosstalk is inherently a global problem, ye...

Gene regulation, evolvability and the limits of genomics

Of the fundamental issues in biology that remain unresolved, one of the most prominent is that of the evolution of gene expression. Unlike proteins, in which conservation of function is largely reflected in conservation of primary sequence, conservation of function in the regulatory regions of genes seems to be maintained in the face of quite widely divergent primary sequence. Since the diversi...