Diverse spatial expression patterns emerge from unified kinetics of transcriptional bursting

Benjamin Zoller, Shawn C. Little, and Thomas Gregor. Cell 175(3), 835–847 (2018).

Abstract

Zoller2018_Graphical_AbstractHow transcriptional bursting relates to gene regulation is a central question that has persisted for more than a decade. Here, we measure nascent transcriptional activity in early Drosophila embryos and characterize the variability in absolute activity levels across expression boundaries. We demonstrate that boundary formation follows a common transcription principle: a single control parameter determines the distribution of transcriptional activity, regardless of gene identity, boundary position, or enhancer-promoter architecture. We infer the underlying bursting kinetics and identify the key regulatory parameter as the fraction of time a gene is in a transcriptionally active state. Unexpectedly, both the rate of polymerase initiation and the switching rates are tightly con- strained across all expression levels, predicting synchronous patterning outcomes at all positions in the embryo. These results point to a shared simplicity underlying the apparently complex transcriptional pro- cesses of early embryonic patterning and indicate a path to general rules in transcriptional regulation.

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