Spatial Analysis of Multi-species Exclusion Processes: Application to Neural Crest Cell Migration in the Embryonic Gut

Hindbrain (vagal) neural crest cells become relatively uniformly distributed along the embryonic intestine during the rostral to caudal colonization wave which forms the enteric nervous system (ENS). When vagal neural crest cells are labeled before migration in avian embryos by in ovo electroporatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of mathematical biology 2012-02, Vol.74 (2), p.474-490
Main Authors: Binder, Benjamin J., Landman, Kerry A., Newgreen, Donald F., Simkin, Johanna E., Takahashi, Yoshiko, Zhang, Dongcheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Cell Biology
Cell migration
Cell Movement - physiology
Cell Proliferation
Coturnix - embryology
Enteric Nervous System - embryology
Intestines - embryology
Intestines - innervation
Life Sciences
Mathematical and Computational Biology
Mathematics
Mathematics and Statistics
Neural Crest - cytology
Original Article
Staining and Labeling
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Summary:Hindbrain (vagal) neural crest cells become relatively uniformly distributed along the embryonic intestine during the rostral to caudal colonization wave which forms the enteric nervous system (ENS). When vagal neural crest cells are labeled before migration in avian embryos by in ovo electroporation, the distribution of labeled neural crest cells in the ENS varies vastly. In some cases, the labeled neural crest cells appear evenly distributed and interspersed with unlabeled neural crest cells along the entire intestine. However, in most specimens, labeled cells occur in relatively discrete patches of varying position, area, and cell number. To determine reasons for these differences, we use a discrete cellular automata (CA) model incorporating the underlying cellular processes of neural crest cell movement and proliferation on a growing domain, representing the elongation of the intestine during development. We use multi-species CA agents corresponding to labeled and unlabeled neural crest cells. The spatial distributions of the CA agents are quantified in terms of an index. This investigation suggests that (i) the percentage of the initial neural crest cell population that is labeled and (ii) the ratio of cell proliferation to motility are the two key parameters producing the extreme differences in spatial distributions observed in avian embryos.
ISSN:0092-8240
1522-9602
DOI:10.1007/s11538-011-9703-z