Dynamics of positional information in the vertebrate neural tube

In developing embryos, cells acquire distinct identities depending on their position in a tissue. Secreted signaling molecules, known as morphogens, act as long-range cues to provide the spatial information that controls these cell fate decisions. In several tissues, both the level and the duration of morphogen signaling appear to be important for determining cell fates. This is the case in the forming vertebrate nervous system where antiparallel morphogen gradients pattern the dorsal-ventral axis by partitioning the tissue into sharply delineated domains of molecularly distinct neural progenitors. How information in the gradients is decoded to generate precisely positioned boundaries of gene expression remains an open question. Here, we adopt tools from information theory to quantify the positional information in the neural tube and investigate how temporal changes in signaling could influence positional precision. The results reveal that the use of signaling dynamics, as well as the signaling level, substantially increases the precision possible for the estimation of position from morphogen gradients. This analysis links the dynamics of opposing morphogen gradients with precise pattern formation and provides an explanation for why time is used to impart positional information.