Programming the Drosophila embryo

A critical step in understanding the mechanisms of development is in defining the steps at the molecular, cellular, and organismal levels in the developmental program for a given organism-so that given the egg one can predict not only how the embryo will develop but also how that embryo evolved from its ancestors. Using methods employed by chemists and engineers in modeling hierarchical systems, I have integrated current theory and experiment into a calculational method that can model early Drosophila embryogenesis on a personal computer. This quantitative calculational tool is simple enough to be useful for experimentalists in designing experiments yet detailed enough for theoreticians to derive new insights on the evolution of developmental genetic networks. By integrating the strengths of theoretical and experimental methods into a single engineering model that can compute the cascade of genetic networks in a real organism, I provide a new calculational tool that can apply current theory to current experimental data to study the evolution of developmental programs. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.