09/06/11, 13:30 - 14:30 at Room 3631 (6th floor of building 3 of the Faculty of Sciences)

In vertebrate somitogenesis, "segmentation clock" genes (such as her in zebrafish, hairy in chick, and hes in mouse) show the oscillation of expression, synchronized over nearby cells through cell-cell interaction. In the unsegmented region called the presomitic mesoderm (PSM), the locations of high gene expression appear with spatial intervals and move like a wave from posterior to anterior. The speed of the wave slows down as it approaches the anterior end. In this talk first I will discuss the mechanism to generate the traveling wave of gene expression observed in the zebrafish PSM. I analyzed traveling wave pattern of her gene expression when there is an anterior-posterior gradient of one of the reaction rates in the gene-protein kinetics.Second I will discuss mechanisms for cells to achieve the synchronization of segmentation clock gene expression between neighbors in a sufficiently short time.

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