Currently I’m trying to learn about morphogen gradients in developmental biology. The literature on this topic is huge and increasing. Developmental biologists are interested in understanding how tissues are made of the right cells in the right place at the right time and in the right numbers. This is what Dr. James Briscoe calls the “4 Ps” of developmental biology: Pattern, Position, Precision, Proportion.
At this point I’m looking for explanations of the biological spatiotemporal mechanisms underlying the following specific processes:
How do the biological systems determine
- the location of the morphogen sources?
- the type of morphogen to be secreted by any given morphogen source at a given location?
- the moment when the morphogen sources are activated, i.e. start secreting signaling molecules?
- the secretion rate at any given moment after activation of any given morphogen source?
- Determine the moment when the morphogen sources are deactivated (i.e. stop secreting signaling molecules)?
Back in 2018 I emailed these questions to a leading developmental biologist in the UK, but never heard back from him. I lack academic credentials and perhaps my questions make no sense and reveal my deep ignorance, rendering me unworthy of getting the attention of busy scientists.
However, from control systems engineering perspective conditional events must have a knowable/explainable cause. Biological systems shouldn’t be an exception.
I believe that the answers to the above questions may lead us to discover new layers of control in the biological systems.
A friendly scientist wrote:
I am a classical molecular biologist, and therefore not an expert in the developmental biology field.
I assume that the reason why the leading biologist did not answer your question was not related with your academic affiliation,
but perhaps to the incapacity of the above mentioned person to provide you with the answer to your rightful questions.In optimal situation, s/he wrote a grant application following your interesting questions and after will have received grants and answered the questions will return back to you.
Biology is much more complicated than any kind of engineering mankind ever made, and therefore the biologists usually focus on a very very
specific detail and try to decipher the biological system accurately.I therefore suggest you to put more focus on a portion of one of your questions and furthermore focus on a specific biological system / cell system etcetera that could be quantitatively „observed“ .
Sorry for not giving you the answer, but hopefully I helped you resolving the negative experience you had in 2018, and stimulate your scientific curiosity in constructive way.
Another friend suggested that I email the questions to the author of a given morphogen-related paper and the biologist kindly replied saying:
Many of the questions you pose are either unknown or there are multiple answers that are context dependent.
I would recommend work by David Umulis (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AD2tl2UAAAAJ&hl=en) or Hilary Ashe (https://ashelab.com/home/publications-2/) or B-Z Shilo (http://shilolabweb.weizmann.ac.il/?page_id=37) as a good place to start.
This should keep me busy for a while. 🙂
Common Design 