Seminar by Dr. Ruben Perez-Carrasco

Understanding species-specific variability in embryonic development tempo: Beyond the steady-state paradigm

During embryonic development, related species can be remarkably similar, composed by tissues of identical morphology and gene expression patterns. Nevertheless, the speed at which different species develop can vary up to an order of magnitude.

In order to identify general molecular mechanisms that allow for this variability in developmental tempo, we require a quantitative description of cell fate dynamics. Unfortunately, this cannot be achieved with the classical mathematical methodology, which analyzes gene expression states by studying the static picture formed by the loci of steady states of a system of ordinary differential equations.

In this talk I will present a mathematical framework that tackles this problem by finding a quasi-steady-state approximation that preserves the orbits of the system in the gene expression space. I will show how using this framework we can identify molecular mechanisms able to control variability in the tempo of gene expression compatible with the ones observed in different developmental processes and how can it be applied in synthetic biology scenarios. 

- C. Manser & R. Perez-Carrasco. A mathematical framework for measuring and tuning tempo in developmental gene regulatory networks Development (2024) 151 (12): dev202950.