Variable patterning in fruit fly embryos due to basins of attraction in underlying gene regulatory dynamics

Proceedings of Previous work on a reaction-diffusion model of a 4-gene regulatory network governing insect segmentation characterized the dynamical basis of robustness to perturbations in this system [1,2]. Here, we computationally study system behavior near bifurcation points corresponding to weak-allele mutant embryos (i.e. with altered gene regulation). Our computations suggest that the variable expressivity and incomplete penetrance observed in some gene mutations may stem from response of the dynamical system to variable input (regulatory genes) near such bifurcation points.,Peer reviewed,Published. Received: 14 April 2012; Accepted: 2 October 2012.