Computational analysis of gene expression to determine both the sequence of lineage choices made by multipotent cells and to identify the genes influencing these decisions is challenging. Here we discover a pattern in the expression levels of a sparse subset of genes among cell types in B- and T-cell developmental lineages that correlates with developmental topologies. We develop a statistical ...

Leaf shape is one of the key determinants of plant architecture. Leaf shape also affects the amount of sunlight captured and influences photosynthetic efficiency; thus, it is an important agronomic trait in crop plants. Understanding the molecular mechanisms governing leaf shape is a central issue of plant developmental biology and agrobiotechnology. Here, we characterized the narrow-leaf pheno...

The filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans primarily reproduces by forming asexual spores called conidia, the integrity of which is governed by the NF-κB type velvet regulators VosA and VelB. The VosA-VelB hetero-complex regulates the expression of spore-specific structural and regulatory genes during conidiogenesis. Here, we characterize one of the VosA/VelB-activated developmental genes, cal...

Bivalent (poised or paused) chromatin comprises activating and repressing histone modifications at the same location. This combination of epigenetic marks at promoter or enhancer regions keeps genes expressed at low levels but poised for rapid activation. Typically, DNA at bivalent promoters is only lowly methylated in normal cells, but frequently shows elevated methylation levels in cancer sam...

During development, two cell types born from closely related progenitor pools often express identical transcriptional regulators despite their completely distinct characteristics. This phenomenon implies the need for a mechanism that operates to segregate the identities of the two cell types throughout differentiation after initial fate commitment. To understand this mechanism, we investigated ...

Developmental diet is known to exert long-term effects on adult phenotypes in many animal species as well disease risk humans, purportedly mediated through changes gene expression. However, there are few studies linking developmental Here, we use a full-factorial design address how three different larval and diets interact affect expression 1-day-old fruit flies ( Drosophila melanogaster ) of b...

Transcriptomic and gene expression analysis have greatly facilitated the identification characterization of transcriptional regulatory factors effectors involved in dormancy progression other physiological processes orchestrated during bud development peach temperate fruit species. Gene measurements are most usually based on average values from several or many individual buds. We performed sing...

Faithful execution of developmental gene expression programs occurs at multiple levels and involves many different components such as transcription factors, histone-modification enzymes, and mRNA processing proteins. Recent evidence suggests that nucleoporins, well known components that control nucleo-cytoplasmic trafficking, have wide-ranging functions in developmental gene regulation that pot...

Temperature is an important abiotic factor influencing growth, development, metabolic performance and sex determination of aquatic organisms. The present study was conducted to test the effect six different temperature levels (24?, 26?, 28? as control, 30?, 32? 34?) on physiological (growth, developmental durations, survivability, ratios O2 consumption) genetic (changes in expression pattern se...

Genetic and molecular analyses of developmental and physiological processes in numerous experimental systems have recently revealed unsuspected levels of complexity within genetic regulatory pathways. Perhaps most surprising is the result that loss-of-function mutations engineered within many regulatory genes have little or no effect on phenotype. Although the lack of phenotype suggests that th...