Data from: Control of relative timing and stoichiometry by a master regulator

Developmental processes in cells require a series of complex steps. Often
only a single master regulator activates genes in these different steps.
This poses several challenges: some targets need to be ordered temporally,
while co-functional targets may need to be synchronized in both time and
expression level. Here we study in single cells the dynamic activation
patterns of early meiosis genes in budding yeast, targets of the meiosis
master regulator Ime1. We quantify the individual roles of the promoter
and protein levels in expression pattern control, as well as the roles of
individual promoter elements. We find a consistent expression pattern
difference between a non-cofunctional pair of genes, and a highly
synchronized activation of a co-functional pair. We show that dynamic
control leading to these patterns is distributed between promoter, gene
and external regions. Through specific reciprocal changes to the promoters
of pairs of genes, we show that different genes can use different promoter
elements to reach near identical activation patterns.