Figure 4.

Building developmental toy models in non-developmental systems with synthetic genetic circuits

(A) Pendulum is an example of a toy model in physics that has been built to understand basic physical forces such gravity and tension. These parameters can be modulated, making the pendulum a good tool to probe basic physical systems. Picture of toy model extracted from http://www.phys.utk.edu/labs/simplependulum.pdf.

(B) Example of a developmental biology toy model. Toda et al. (2020) engineered a synthetic morphogen gradient leading to morphogenetic patterning of mCherry responses by using GFP ligands. Range of the gradient can be changed, and sources of morphogens can be adjusted. Picture of the biological toy model is from Toda et al. (2020).