Related papers: Phenotypic heterogeneity in modeling cancer evolut…
Most human tumors result from the accumulation of multiple genetic and epigenetic alterations in a single cell. Mutations that confer a fitness advantage to the cell are known as driver mutations and are causally related to tumorigenesis.…
The conventional cancer stem cell (CSC) theory indicates a hierarchy of CSCs and non-stem cancer cells (NSCCs), that is, CSCs can differentiate into NSCCs but not vice versa. However, an alternative paradigm of CSC theory with reversible…
Resource are often not uniformly distributed within a population. Spatial variations of concentration of a resource, change the fitness of competing strategies locally. The notion of fitness varying with respect to both genotype and…
Movement behavior of biological entities plays a crucial role in their destiny through regulating their intraspecific and interspecific interactions as well as their interaction with surrounding environment. In spite of various models for…
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…
Cancer cells are known to modify their micro-environment such that it can sustain a larger population, or, in ecological terms, they construct a niche which increases the carrying capacity of the population. It has however been argued that…
Resistance to chemotherapies, particularly to anticancer treatments, is an increasing medical concern. Among the many mechanisms at work in cancers, one of the most important is the selection of tumor cells expressing resistance genes or…
Biological living systems in general exhibit complex and diverse dynamics. The latter, in particular, is essential, since diversification increases the odds of survival of an organism while reducing the risk of extinction of the population.…
We consider the effect of network structure on the evolution of a population. Models of this kind typically consider a population of fixed size and distribution. Here we consider eco-evolutionary dynamics where population size and…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. It is well known that population structure can affect evolutionary dynamics. Traditionally, natural selection is studied between mutants that differ in reproductive rate, but are…
Cancer results from a sequence of genetic and epigenetic changes which lead to a variety of abnormal phenotypes including increased proliferation and survival of somatic cells, and thus, to a selective advantage of pre-cancerous cells. The…
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…
Cancer progression is an evolutionary process that is driven by mutation and selection in a population of tumor cells. We discuss mathematical models of cancer progression, starting from traditional multistage theory. Each stage is…
A cell-molecular based evolutionary model of tumor development driven by a stochastic Moran birth-death process is developed, where each cell carries molecular information represented by a four-digit binary string, used to differentiate…
Most of the DNA that composes a complex organism is non-coding and defined as junk. Even the coding part is composed of genes that affect the phenotype differently. Therefore, a random mutation has an effect on the specimen fitness that…
Heterogeneity is ubiquitous in stem cells (SC), cancer cells (CS), and cancer stem cells (CSC). SC and CSC heterogeneity is manifested as diverse sub-populations with self-renewing and unique regeneration capacity. Moreover, the CSC progeny…
Research into somatic mutations in cancer cell DNA and their role in tumour growth and progression between successive stages is crucial for improving our understanding of cancer evolution. Mathematical and computer modelling can provide…
Tumor development is an evolutionary process in which a heterogeneous population of cells with differential growth capabilities compete for resources in order to gain a proliferative advantage. What are the minimal ingredients needed to…