Bicoid (Bcd) protein translation rate in embryo

Range ≈2 proteins/mRNA/min
Organism Fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
Reference Petkova MD, Little SC, Liu F, Gregor T. Maternal origins of developmental reproducibility. Curr Biol. 2014 Jun 2 24(11):1283-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.04.028. p.1286 right column 2nd paragraphPubMed ID24856210
Method P.1283 right column 3rd paragraph: "To optically identify individual mRNA molecules in whole-mount embryos and to assess embryo-to-embryo reproducibility, [investigators] extended a recently developed mRNA labeling method of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) [refs 18, 20]. [They] labeled bcd mRNAs with synthetic probes and then counted individual molecules and measured their fluorescence intensity by confocal microscopy (Figure 1, Figure S1 available online)."
Comments P.1286 right column 2nd paragraph: "[Investigators] found a total of NBcd = (8.2 ± 1.8) × 10^7 (SD) Bcd-GFP molecules in approximately 2-hr-old embryos (i.e., t14 = 146 min). The value is larger than earlier estimates in live embryos [ref 7] due to the maturation correction [ref 18] and lower than semiquantitative biochemical measurements [ref 29] (see Supplemental Experimental Procedures). Thus, with Mbcd = (7.5 ± 0.8) × 10^5 mRNA molecules, [they] calculated a translation rate of k ≈ 2 proteins per mRNA per minute, which matches previously reported translation rates during the development of sea urchin embryos [ref 30, Bolouri & Davidson 2003 PMID 12883007]."
Entered by Uri M
ID 111203