Fig. 2: Phenotypic plasticity creates a stable phenotype distribution.
From: Understanding and leveraging phenotypic plasticity during metastasis formation
Each panel shows the distribution of phenotypes (Eq. (1)) relative to the carrying capacity K for a fixed value of the transition bias λ and the number of phenotypes N. The stable phenotype distribution changes with the transition bias λ but remains qualitatively unaffected by changing the number of phenotypes N. The stable distribution is uniform when there is no transition bias to either epithelial or mesenchymal-like phenotypes, i.e., λ = 0. λ < 0 depicts a transition bias towards epithelial-like phenotypes and leads to a relative increase in epithelial cells. Conversely, λ > 0 results in a transition bias towards mesenchymal-like phenotypes and causes a relative increase in mesenchymal cells.
