Coalescent models for developmental biology and the spatio-temporal dynamics of growing tissues
Author(s)
Smadbeck, P
Stumpf, MP
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Development is a process that needs to be tightly coordinated in both space and time. Cell tracking and lineage tracing have become important experimental techniques in developmental biology and allow us to map the fate of cells and their progeny. A generic feature of developing and homeostatic tissues that these analyses have revealed is that relatively few cells give rise to the bulk of the cells in a tissue; the lineages of most cells come to an end quickly. Computational and theoretical biologists/physicists have, in response, developed a range of modelling approaches, most notably agent-based modelling. These models seem to capture features observed in experiments, but can also become computationally expensive. Here, we develop complementary genealogical models of tissue development that trace the ancestry of cells in a tissue back to their most recent common ancestors. We show that with both bounded and unbounded growth simple, but universal scaling relationships allow us to connect coalescent theory with the fractal growth models extensively used in developmental biology. Using our genealogical perspective, it is possible to study bulk statistical properties of the processes that give rise to tissues of cells, without the need for large-scale simulations.
Date Issued
2016-04-06
Date Acceptance
2016-03-11
Citation
Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2016, 13 (117)
ISSN
1742-5689
Publisher
The Royal Society
Journal / Book Title
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Volume
13
Issue
117
Copyright Statement
© 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original
author and source are credited.
License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original
author and source are credited.
License URL
Sponsor
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Identifier
PII: rsif.2016.0112
Grant Number
BB/K003909/1
Subjects
agent-based modelling
coalescent theory
developmental biology
lineage tracing
tissue growth models
General Science & Technology
MD Multidisciplinary
Publication Status
Published