Meghan D. J. Bragdon

This study shows that cooperative self-assembly of transcriptional regulators can improve regulatory specificity and long-term stability of synthetic gene circuits in yeast.

The paper shows that a mutation in a minimal enhancer of Drosophila eve stripe 2 is buffered by flanking sequences in extended enhancer constructs, but not in the endogenous context.

The paper investigates the HbP2 enhancer in Drosophila, showing that cooperative binding of Bcd is insufficient to explain its sharp expression pattern, and identifies other factors like pioneer factors and histone modifiers as key contributors.

The paper compares anterior-posterior patterning gene expression across five Drosophila species to identify evolutionary changes in developmental programs.

The paper shows that Caudal counter-represses Hunchback to enable even-skipped stripe 2 expression in Drosophila embryos, challenging the traditional view of Hunchback as a direct activator.