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Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Spatial Profiling of Protein and RNA Expression in Tissue: An Approach to Fine-Tune Virtual Microdissection
Published on: July 6, 2022
Role of spatial averaging in the precision of gene expression patterns
Thorsten Erdmann1, Martin Howard, Pieter Rein ten Wolde
1FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
None:
During embryonic development, differentiating cells respond via gene expression to positional cues from morphogen gradients. While gene expression is often highly erratic, embryonic development is precise. We show by theory and simulations that diffusion of the expressed protein can enhance the precision of its expression domain. While diffusion lessens the sharpness of the expression boundary, it also reduces super-Poissonian noise by washing out bursts of gene expression. Balancing these effects yields an optimal diffusion constant maximizing the precision of the expression domain.
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