Urchin Way
Gene regulatory network
This image of a sea-urchin embryo shows where two regulatory genes are being expressed.
As an animal develops from an embryo, its cells take diverse paths, eventually forming different body parts muscles, bones, heart. The cells are following a genetic blueprint, which consists of complex webs of interacting genes called gene regulatory networks. Biologists at the California Institute of Technology have for the first time built a computational model of one of these networks. Their work is based on roughly a decade of research into how gene networks control development in sea-urchin embryos. The scientists say the model is remarkably good at calculating what sea-urchin gene regulatory networks do to control the fates of different cells in the early stages of development. The model confirms that the interactions among a few dozen genes suffice to tell an embryo how to start developing different body parts in the right places.
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