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An Age-Dependent Branching Process with Correlations Among Sister Cells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Kenny S. Crump
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo

Extract

In this note we consider an age-dependent branching process in which the life-spans of sister cells are correlated as well as the numbers of offspring of sister cells, but otherwise cells live and reproduce independently. One might surmise that in many populations there would be some positive correlation among siblings due to similar characteristics inherited from parents. Data of Powell (1955) seem to corroborate this conjecture. Powell's data indicate that in certain bacterial populations the life-spans of sister cells have significant positive correlations while the correlation between the life-spans of mother and daughter cells is negligible. More recently positive correlations have been observed in cell populations among the life-spans of first cousins and also among second cousins (Kubitschek (1967)). However, the model presented in this note permits correlations only among siblings.

Type
Short Communications
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 

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References

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