Making a Switch

Here’s a mystery: if every cell in a developing embryo has the same genes, because they all come from one fertilised egg, then how does it manage to build so many different tissues and structures? The answer lies in the genetic ‘control switches’ that turn each gene on or off at the right time and in the right place. Each gene has multiple switches, working together in various combinations to create the complex patterns of gene activity required to build an entire organism from a single cell. To understand more about what each switch does, researchers are creating fruit fly embryos with altered switch combinations. The top row of images are normal fly embryos, showing the activity patterns of certain genes, while the lower panels are embryos with manipulated switches. Careful analysis of the patterns reveals exactly which switches are responsible for activating genes in different parts of the embryo.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

Website

• Image from work by Leslie Dunipace, Zsuzsa Ákos and Angelike Stathopoulos
• California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, December 2019