Dynamic spatial pattern formation in the sea urchin embryo

Abstract

The spatiotemporal evolution of various proteins during the endo-mesodermal specification of the sea urchin embryo in the form of an expanding torus has been known experimentally for some time, and the regulatory network that controls this dynamic evolution of gene expression has been recently partially clarified. In this paper we construct a relatively simple mathematical model of this process that retains the basic features of the gene network and is able to reproduce the spatiotemporal patterns observed experimentally. We show here that a mathematical model based only on the gene-protein interactions so far reported in the literature predicts the origin of the behaviour to lie on a delayed negative feed-back loop due to the protein Blimp1 on the transcription of its corresponding mRNA. However though consistent with earlier results, this contradicts recent findings, where it has been established that the dynamical evolution of Wnt8 protein is independent of Blimp1. This leads us to offer a modified version of the original model based on observations in similar systems, and some more recent work in the sea urchin, assuming the existence of a mechanism involving inhibitory loop on wnt8 transcription. This hypothesis leads to a better match with the experimental results and suggests that the possibility of the existence of such an interaction in the sea urchin should be explored.