Berlin 2018 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 45: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems (joint session DY/BP)
DY 45.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 10:15–10:30, BH-N 333
Extreme value statistics of mutation accumulation in renewing cell populations — •Philip Greulich1,2 and Benjamin D. Simons3,4 — 1Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton, UK — 2Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton, UK — 3Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK — 4Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK
The emergence of a predominant phenotype within a cell population is often triggered by a rare accumulation of DNA mutations in a single cell. For example, tumors may be initiated by a single cell in which multiple mutations cooperate to bypass a cell's defense mechanisms. The risk of such an event is thus determined by the extremal accumulation of mutations across tissue cells. To address this risk, we studied the statistics of the maximum mutation numbers in a Moran process, as a model for a renewing cell population. By drawing an analogy between the genealogy of a cell population and the theory of branching random walks, I will present new analytical estimates for the probability of exceeding a threshold number of mutations, and show how the statistical distribution of maximum mutation numbers scales with age and cell population size.