Universal asymptotic clone size distribution for general population growth

Condensed Matter lunchtime seminar

Universal asymptotic clone size distribution for general population growth

  • Event time: 1:00pm
  • Event date: 6th June 2016
  • Speaker: Michael Nicholson (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
  • Location: Room 2511,

Event details

The Nobel prize winning model of Luria and Delbruck describes the initiation of a distinct mutant population from a primary (or wild-type) population and has been widely applied to model the emergence of drug-resistance. In this talk I'll be considering some extensions of that model and will be framing the discussion in the context of metastasis, where the primary population is the tumour and the mutant population are the metastases (or secondary tumours). The focus will be on the size distribution of the metastases and how the primary tumour's growth affects this. Typically, the time between tumour initiation and diagnosis is large, and exactly how the primary tumour grew is unknown. Motivated by this, we consider the large-time asymptotics and find that for a very large class of growth functions, a general two-parameter distribution emerges for the metastasis sizes.

About Condensed Matter lunchtime seminars

This is a weekly series of informal talks given primarily by members of the institute of condensed matter and complex systems, but is also open to members of other groups and external visitors. The aim of the series is to promote discussion and learning of various topics at a level suitable to the broad background of the group. Everyone is welcome to attend..

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