Morphogen gradients: formation, modeling, signaling mechanism

10 June 2022

Mary Mullins
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

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Abstract

Morphogen gradients are fundamental to patterning a field of naïve pluripotent cells into distinct cell fates to form various tissues and organs. Morphogens act across a field of cells to generate positional information and specify cell types in a concentration-dependent mechanism. How morphogen gradients are shaped in time and space is key to generating the diversity of cell types at an appropriate scale. We focus on the zebrafish Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) morphogen signaling gradient that patterns the dorsoventral (DV) embryonic axis of most animals. We combine a highly quantitative readout of BMP signaling in wild-type embryos and those deficient in extracellular BMP gradient modulators with iterative mathematical modeling and computational screens, which surprisingly contradicts a decades-long model of BMP gradient formation in vertebrates. I will also discuss our efforts to unravel the mechanism by which a BMP heterodimer exclusively signals in this morphogen system.

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