1. Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
2. Department of Cellular Biochemistry and Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91120, Israel
3. Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

Correspondence to: Abraham Fainsod²Naama Barkai^1,3 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to N.B. (Email: Naama.barkai@weizmann.ac.il) or A.F. (Email: fainsod@cc.huji.ac.il).

Abstract

In groundbreaking experiments, Hans Spemann demonstrated that the dorsal part of the amphibian embryo can generate a well-proportioned tadpole, and that a small group of dorsal cells, the 'organizer', can induce a complete and well-proportioned twinned axis when transplanted into a host embryo. Key to organizer function is the localized secretion of inhibitors of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP), which defines a graded BMP activation profile. Although the central proteins involved in shaping this gradient are well characterized, their integrated function, and in particular how pattern scales with size, is not understood. Here we present evidence that in Xenopus, the BMP activity gradient is defined by a 'shuttling-based' mechanism, whereby the BMP ligands are translocated ventrally through their association with the BMP inhibitor Chordin. This shuttling, with feedback repression of the BMP ligand Admp, offers a quantitative explanation to Spemann's observations, and accounts naturally for the scaling of embryo pattern with its size.

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