Fig. 3: The organization of hierarchical tissues that have evolved to limit somatic evolution. | Nature Communications

Fig. 3: The organization of hierarchical tissues that have evolved to limit somatic evolution.

From: Trade-off between reducing mutational accumulation and increasing commitment to differentiation determines tissue organization

Fig. 3

We consider the least complex tissue, i.e., the one with the smallest number of hierarchical levels that can keep the lifetime risk of cancer below a specific value set by the “drift-barrier” (see Methods for details). a For the hematopoietic system, where N0 = 104 stem cells produce approximately N = 1015 mature cells during an individual’s lifetime we consider a threshold lifetime risk of about 2%. b For the colon, where N0 = 108 and N = 1014 we consider a threshold of about 4%. Each panel shows the value of a given parameter of the least complex tissue for different values of s and μ. For both tissues, the area delimited by the dashed lines corresponds to the most realistic values for μ and s based on the literature, as discussed in the main text. c To explore tissues with different values of N/N0 we keep N = 1015, μ = 10−5 and the maximum acceptable lifetime risk of 2% fixed, but change the ratio N/N0. The dashed line corresponds to the value for the hematopoetic system.

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