Related papers: Symmetric vs asymmetric stem cell divisions: an ad…
In order to fulfill cell proliferation and differentiation through cellular hierarchy, stem cells can undergo either asymmetric or symmetric divisions. Recent studies pay special attention to the effect of different modes of stem cell…
Stem cells have the potential to produce lineages of non-stem cell populations (differentiated cells) via a ubiquitous hierarchal division scheme. Differentiation of a stem cell into (partially) differentiated cells can happen either…
Cycling tissues such as the intestinal epithelium, germ line, and hair follicles, require a constant flux of differentiated cells. These tissues are maintained by a population of stem cells, which generate differentiated progenies and…
We consider a class of biologically-motivated stochastic processes in which a unicellular organism divides its resources (volume or damaged proteins, in particular) symmetrically or asymmetrically between its progeny. Assuming the final…
Accumulating evidence suggests that many tumors have a hierarchical organization, with the bulk of the tumor composed of relatively differentiated short-lived progenitor cells that are maintained by a small population of undifferentiated…
Asymmetric segregation of key proteins at cell division -- be it a beneficial or deleterious protein -- is ubiquitous in unicellular organisms and often considered as an evolved trait to increase fitness in a stressed environment. Here, we…
Multitype branching processes are ideal for studying the population dynamics of stem cell populations undergoing mutation accumulation over the years following transplant. In such stochastic models, several quantities are of clinical…
This paper develops a point-mutation model describing the evolutionary dynamics of a population of adult stem cells. Such a model may prove useful for quantitative studies of tissue aging and the emergence of cancer. We consider two modes…
Tomasetti and Vogelstein (2015a) find that the incidence of a set of cancer types is correlated with the total number of normal stem cell divisions. Here, we separate the effects of standing stem cell number (i.e., organ or tissue size) and…
To explain the differentiation of stem cells in terms of dynamical systems theory, models of interacting cells with intracellular protein expression dynamics are analyzed and simulated. Simulations were carried out for all possible protein…
This manuscript has been written to address questions related to our recent publication (Science 347:78-81, 2015). We appreciate the many reactions to this paper that have been communicated to us, either privately or publicly. The following…
Tumors are defined by their intense proliferation, but sometimes cancer cells turn senescent and stop replicating. In the stochastic cancer model in which all cells are tumorigenic, senescence is seen as the result of random mutations,…
Cell size control and homeostasis is a major topic in cell biology yet to be fully understood. Several growth laws like the timer, adder, and sizer were proposed, and mathematical approaches that model cell growth and division were…
How can tissues generate large numbers of cells, yet keep the divisional load (the number of divisions along cell lineages) low in order to curtail the accumulation of somatic mutations and reduce the risk of cancer? To answer the question…
Stem cells are characterized by their ability to self-renew, as well as to differentiate and give rise to new populations of cells. Stem cell divisions are crucial for generative processes that occur during early development, and later in…
Compiled data for the stem cell numbers, Ns, and division rates, ms, is reanalized in order to show that we can distinguish two groups of human tissues. In the first one, there is a relatively high fraction of maintenance (stem and transit)…
A ubiquitous feature of living cells is their growth over time followed by division into daughter cells. How isogenic cell populations maintain size homeostasis, i.e., a narrow distribution of cell size, is an intriguing fundamental…
Tumor recurrence, driven by the evolution of drug resistance is a major barrier to therapeutic success in cancer. Resistance is often caused by genetic alterations such as point mutation, which refers to the modification of a single genomic…
We study time continuous branching processes with exponentially distributed lifetimes, with two types of cells that proliferate according to binary fission. A range of possible system dynamics are considered, each of which is characterized…
Asymmetric partition of fate determinants during cell division is a hallmark of cell differentiation. Recent work suggested that such a mechanism is hijacked by cancer cells to increase both their phenotypic heterogeneity and plasticity and…