Figure 5. Measurement of Bcd lifetime in unfertilized eggs.

Fraction of Dronpa-Bcd recovered from the dark state Q_df (t₀+T)/Q_df (t₀) in a population of 8 unfertilized eggs for a series of photoconversion experiments with delay T = 8 min. Solid line represents smoothing spline fit to all data smoothed by a Savitzky-Golay filter [42] of span 6. Time is expressed in minutes since the start of imaging, which occurs at approximately 4 ± 1 hours post-oviposition for the unfertilized eggs. Initial lower recovery appears to be a transient principally attributable to build-up of endogenous autofluorescence in the unfertilized eggs, as it is correlated much more strongly with total image count than would be reasonable if it were a function of developmental age alone. Recovery after transient corresponds to an unfertilized Bcd degradation rate of $k_{deg}^u=0.009\pm 0.006{\min }^{-1}$.