Demographic modeling of transient amplifying cell population growth.

Quantitative measurement for the timings of cell division and death with the application of mathematical models is a standard way to estimate kinetic parameters of cellular proliferation. On the basis of label-based measurement data, several quantitative mathematical models describing short-term dynamics of transient cellular proliferation have been proposed and extensively studied. In the present paper, we show that existing mathematical models for cell population growth can be reformulated as a specific case of generation progression models, a variant of parity progression models developed in mathematical demography. Generation progression ratio (GPR) is defined for a generation progression model as an expected ratio of population increase or decrease via cell division. We also apply a stochastic simulation algorithm which is capable of representing the population growth dynamics of transient amplifying cells for various inter-event time distributions of cell division and death. Demographic modeling and the application of stochastic simulation algorithm presented here can be used as a unified platform to systematically investigate the short term dynamics of cell population growth.