Gene Regulatory Network Models for Floral Organ Determination

Understanding how genotypes map unto phenotypes implies an integrative understanding of the processes regulating cell differentiation and morphogenesis, which comprise development. Such a task requires the use of theoretical and computational approaches to integrate and follow the concerted action of multiple genetic and nongenetic components that hold highly nonlinear interactions. Gene regulatory network (GRN) models have been proposed to approach such task. GRN models have become very useful to understand how such types of interactions restrict the multi-gene expression patterns that characterize different cell-fates. More recently, such temporal single-cell models have been extended to recover the temporal and spatial components of morphogenesis. Since the complete genomic GRN is still unknown and intractable for any organism, and some clear developmental modules have been identified, we focus here on the analysis of well-curated and experimentally grounded small GRN modules. One of the first experimentally grounded GRN that was proposed and validated corresponds to the regulatory module involved in floral organ determination. In this chapter we use this GRN as an example of the methodologies involved in: (1) formalizing and integrating molecular genetic data into the logical functions (Boolean functions) that rule gene interactions and dynamics in a Boolean GRN; (2) the algorithms and computational approaches used to recover the steady-states that correspond to each cell type, as well as the set of initial GRN configurations that lead to each one of such states (i.e., basins of attraction); (3) the approaches used to validate a GRN model using wild type and mutant or overexpression data, or to test the robustness of the GRN being proposed; (4) some of the methods that have been used to incorporate random fluctuations in the GRN Boolean functions and enable stochastic GRN models to address the temporal sequence with which gene configurations and cell fates are attained; (5) the methodologies used to approximate discrete Boolean GRN to continuous systems and their use in further dynamic analyses. The methodologies explained for the GRN of floral organ determination developed here in detail can be applied to any other functional developmental module.