Scalers: genes that regulate scale invariance of embryonic development
Embryos of many organisms are able to maintain the invariance of their structure, regardless of size – the so-called phenomenon of embryonic scaling. For example, embryos of sea urchin or frog, which have developed from individual cells isolated shortly after the beginning of egg cleavage, self-regulate their structure so that they appear as smaller copies of normal ones. Researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Bases of Embryogenesis at the IBCH RAS have proposed a general approach to the study of the mechanisms of embryonic scaling. They heuristically postulated and then mathematically proved the existence of special genes, named scalers, the expression of which depends on the embryo size, developed a method for targeted search of such genes, and, as proof of principle, disclose the mechanism by means of which one of the found scalers, mmp3, regulates patterning of Xenopus laevis embryo in a size-dependent manner. This work was published in the Developmental Cell journal. Learn more
january 10, 2022