Related papers: Population dynamics of multiple ecDNA types
A recently proposed single progenitor cell model for skin cell proliferation [Clayton et al., Nature v446, 185 (2007)] is extended to incorporate homeostasis as a fixed point of the dynamics. Unlimited cell proliferation in such a model can…
Phenotype variations define heterogeneity of biological and molecular systems, which play a crucial role in several mechanisms. Heterogeneity has been demonstrated in tumor cells. Here, samples from blood of patients affected from colon…
Despite initial success, cancer therapies often fail due to the emergence of drug-resistant cells. In this study, we use a mathematical model to investigate how cancer evolves over time, specifically focusing on the state of the tumor when…
How much information does a cell inherit from its ancestors beyond its genetic sequence? What are the epigenetic mechanisms that allow this? Despite the rise in available epigenetic data, how such information is inherited through the cell…
"Epigenetic Tracking" is a model of systems of biological cells, able to generate arbitrary 2 or 3-dimensional cellular shapes of any kind and complexity (in terms of number of cells, number of colours, etc.) starting from a single cell. If…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
The spreading and regulation of epigenetic marks on chromosomes is crucial to establish and maintain cellular identity. Nonetheless, the dynamical mechanism leading to the establishment and maintenance of a given, cell-line specific,…
The transition from the epithelial to mesenchymal phenotype and its reverse (from mesenchymal to epithelial) are crucial processes necessary for the progression and spread of cancer. In this paper, we investigate how phenotypic switching at…
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…
We present a novel mathematical model of heterogeneous cell proliferation where the total population consists of a subpopulation of slow-proliferating cells and a subpopulation of fast-proliferating cells. The model incorporates two…
We discovered a dynamic phase transition induced by sexual reproduction. The dynamics is a pure Darwinian rule with both fundamental ingredients to drive evolution: 1) random mutations and crossings which act in the sense of increasing the…
Understanding the interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix (ECM) during collective cell invasion is crucial for advancements in tissue engineering, cancer therapies, and regenerative medicine. This study focuses on the roles…
The role of the selection pressure and mutation amplitude on the behavior of a single-species population evolving on a two-dimensional lattice, in a periodically changing environment, is studied both analytically and numerically. The…
Cells are known to utilize biochemical noise to probabilistically switch between distinct gene expression states. We demonstrate that such noise-driven switching is dominated by tails of probability distributions and is therefore…
We study the spatial evolutionary dynamics of solid tumors as they obtain additional driver mutations. We start with a cancer clone that expands uniformly in three dimensions giving rise to a spherical shape. We assume that cell division…
Genetic alterations initiate tumors and enable the evolution of drug resistance. The pro-cancer view of mutations is however incomplete, and several studies show that mutational load can reduce tumor fitness. Given its negative effect,…
Stochastic models of sequential mutation acquisition are widely used to quantify cancer and bacterial evolution. Across manifold scenarios, recurrent research questions are: how many cells are there with $n$ alterations, and how long will…
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…
When biological populations expand into new territory, the evolutionary outcomes can be strongly influenced by genetic drift, the random fluctuations in allele frequencies. Meanwhile, spatial variability in the environment can also…
How do mammalian cells that share the same genome exist in notably distinct phenotypes, exhibiting differences in morphology, gene expression patterns, and epigenetic chromatin statuses? Furthermore how do cells of different phenotypes…