The Galton-Watson process and aging cells

Abstract: The Galton–Watson process was developed to explore the possible extinction of family names, sparked by a Victorian worry that aristocratic surnames were slowly dying out. The Galton–Watson process models how populations evolve across generations, where each individual produces a random number of offspring. In a multitype Galton-Watson process we allow the individuals to be of different type to allow for different probabilistic behavior. In this talk, I present a multitype Galton-Watson process to model populations of cells that ages biologically by accumulating damage within the cell body. The cells have the ability to pass on part of its damage to its daughter cell, resulting in rejuvenation and longer life spans. Furthermore, I present how we can model a single cell using Markov chains.

Mathematics

Audience: general audience

Gothenburg PhD seminar

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