Modelling and calibration of pair-rule protein patterns in Drosophila embryo: From Even-skipped and Fushi-tarazu to Wingless expression networks

We modelled and calibrated the distributions of the seven-stripe patterns of Even-skipped (\textit{Eve}) and Fushi-tarazu (\textit{Ftz}) pair-rule proteins along the anteroposterior axis of the \textit{Drosphila} embryo, established during early development. We have identified the putative repressive combinations for five \textit{Eve} enhancers, and we have explored the relationship between \textit{Eve} and \textit{Ftz} for complementary patterns. The regulators of \textit{Eve} and \textit{Ftz} are stripe-specific DNA enhancers with embryo position-dependent activation rates and are regulated by the gap family of proteins. We achieved remarkable data matching of the \textit{Eve} stripe pattern, and the calibrated model reproduces gap gene mutation experiments. Extended work inferring the Wingless (\textit{Wg}) fourteen stripe pattern from \textit{Eve} and \textit{Ftz} enhancers have been proposed, clarifying the hierarchical structure of \textit{Drosphila}'s genetic expression network during early development.
Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures