Ratings

The authors present a study to demonstrate that patterning gene network stability, in the DV boundary of the drosophila wing system, can be mediated by refractoriness to the Wg signal in boundary cells, and that this is mediated by Cut.

The study combines in silico and in vivo experiments and this is a nice combination that deserves attention. The general principles are certainly interesting to those working in the systems biology field. I am aware that the results will be controversial, especially to those working on the components of this system using classical approaches. The authors do a decent job arguing for why there might be important components missing in their analysis. They say that they can be included in the cooperative coefficients, in the way they modeled the components they analyzed.