Increased robustness of early embryogenesis through collective decision-making by key transcription factors

摘要

BackgroundUnderstanding the mechanisms by which hundreds of diverse cell types develop from a single mammalian zygote has been a central challenge of developmental biology. Conrad H. Waddington, in his metaphoric “epigenetic landscape” visualized the early embryogenesis as a hierarchy of lineage bifurcations. In each bifurcation, a single progenitor cell type produces two different cell lineages. The tristable dynamical systems are used to model the lineage bifurcations. It is also shown that a genetic circuit consisting of two auto-activating transcription factors (TFs) with cross inhibitions can form a tristable dynamical system.