Multimodal transcriptional control of pattern formation in embryonic development.

Predicting how interactions between transcription factors and regulatory DNA sequence dictate rates of transcription and, ultimately, drive developmental outcomes remains an open challenge in physical biology. Using stripe 2 of the gene in embryos as a case study, we dissect the regulatory forces underpinning a key step along the developmental decision-making cascade: the generation of cytoplasmic mRNA patterns via the control of transcription in individual cells. Using live imaging and computational approaches, we found that the transcriptional burst frequency is modulated across the stripe to control the mRNA production rate.