Branching processes in biology (Q5920677)

This book is the result (already as a second edition) of a fruitful and long collaboration between a mathematician and a cell biologist. Capturing the best of both worlds, the book provides not only the biology and mathematical background for this topic, but also offers numerous examples which render it accessible to (post-graduate) students and researchers alike. The book is organised in eight chapters and three appendices. It commences with a series of motivating examples focused on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and its link to branching processes. Based on this starting point, the branching property is formalized and its classification of lifetime, type space and criticality are introduced. The second chapter is built on the biological background describing genome related notions such as chromosomes, DNA, genes and recombination, and elements of cell cycle kinetics and cell division. The chapter also contains a brief description of the characteristics of cancer cells and models for population genetics such as the Wright-Fisher model and coalescent-based models. The third chapter describes in detail the Galton-Watson process. Following the theoretical background on its construction, functional equation and elementary properties, the authors use the example of the cell cycle model to discuss the extension and criticality of the process. Other examples include the analysis of cancer mutations, gene amplification and the analysis of DNA repeats modelled as an iterated Galton-Watson process. The fourth chapter focuses on age dependent processes, in particular, the Markov case. Following a description of the mathematical background in terms of the differential equation for the probability generating function (pgf) and its properties, the authors illustrate the theory using an example of clonal resistance of cancer cells. The fifth chapter describes the Bellman-Harris process and discusses the integral equations for the pgf, the renewal theory and the asymptotics of the moments. They present as example the analysis of a stathmokinetic experiment. In the sixth chapter the authors present, in an example driven approach, multi-type processes. The applications include the analysis of mutations and fluctuations, the model of two cell populations, the stochastic model of the cell cycle with chemotherapy, the cell surface aggregation, the deletions in mitochondrial DNA and the PCR. The seventh chapter brings the theory one step further and presents branching processes with infinitely many types. The theory background includes the description of Galton-Watson and Bellman-Harris processes with innumerably many types and branching random walks and the description of generalized linear-fractional distributions and their applications. The examples include stable and unstable gene amplification, quasistationarity in a branching model of division-within-division and the mathematical modelling of the loss of telomere sequences. In the eighth chapter, the authors present the genealogies of branching processes and some applications including the estimation of the age of a mitochondrial eve. The three appendices present, respectively, the multivariate probability generating functions, the probability distributions for the Bellman-Harris process and the Jagers-Crump-Mode process with an application to Alexandersson's cell population model. By ending each chapter with an extensive set of references for researchers with either mathematical or biology backgrounds, and by including a biological glossary for mathematicians and a mathematical glossary for biologists, this book is a landmark for collaborations in the mathematical biology interdisciplinary research area. In addition, the authors provide sufficient information for a good understanding of the topic and leave the door open for further research through the proposed problems. Therefore, this book can be treated as an excellent textbook for a wide audience varying from students to lecturers.