Speaker
Description
We present stochastic models of growth of a cell population of cultured yeast cells with gradually decaying chromosome endings, called the telomeres. The model has the form of the age-dependent Markov branching process with doubly-denumerable type space, where the type of a cell is defined as the pair of integers representing the length of telomeres at both ends of a chromosome. We derive the forward and backward equations for the generating functions characterizing the process, and find that their general solutions. We derive monet equations and consider special cases with senscence and cell death.. These computations as well as simulations suggest instability of telomere lengths close to their disappearance (cells' senescence).
We further consider models involving cell death and the ALT mechanism of telomere reconstruction, which include connections with slightly supercritical branching processes conditional on non-extinction. We illustrate the theory with examples from our own experiments as well as from recent literature. We further explain how models of the so-called "branching within branching" link telomere dynamics to human carcinogenesis.
