Aging and immortality in a cell proliferation model.
We investigate a model of cell division in which the length of telomeres within a cell regulates its proliferative potential. At each division, telomeres undergo a systematic length decrease as well as a superimposed fluctuation due to exchange of telomere DNA between the two daughter cells. A cell becomes senescent when one or more of its telomeres become shorter than a critical length. We map this telomere dynamics onto a biased branching-diffusion process with an absorbing boundary condition whenever any telomere reaches the critical length. Using first-passage ideas, we find a phase transition between finite lifetime and immortality (infinite proliferation) of the cell population as a function of the influence of telomere shortening, fluctuations, and cell division.
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Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Blagoev
K B
KB
Trugman
S A
SA
Redner
S
S
D016923:Cell Death / Q000235:genetics; D002455:Cell Division / Q000235:genetics*; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000235:genetics; D016922:Cellular Senescence / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D004261:DNA Replication / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D008957:Models, Genetic; D016615:Telomere / Q000235:genetics*
D004247:DNA