The dynamic transmission of positional information in stau^- mutants during Drosophila embryogenesis

It has been suggested that Staufen (Stau) is key in controlling the variability of the posterior boundary of the Hb anterior domain (x). However, the mechanism that underlies this control is elusive. Here, we quantified the dynamic 3D expression of segmentation genes in Drosophila embryos. With improved control of measurement errors, we show that the x of stau^- mutants reproducibly moves posteriorly by 10% of the embryo length (EL) to the wild type (WT) position in the nuclear cycle (nc) 14, and that its variability over short time windows is comparable to that of the WT. Moreover, for stau^- mutants, the upstream Bicoid (Bcd) gradients show equivalent relative intensity noise to that of the WT in nc12-nc14, and the downstream Even-skipped (Eve) and cephalic furrow (CF) show the same positional errors as these factors in WT. Our results indicate that threshold-dependent activation and self-organized filtering are not mutually exclusive and could both be implemented in early Drosophila embryogenesis.