Cell lineage tracing in the developing enteric nervous system: Superstars revealed by experiment and simulation

Abstract

Cell lineage tracing is a powerful tool for understanding how proliferation and differentiation of individual cells contribute to population behaviour. In the developing enteric nervous system (ENS), enteric neural crest (ENC) cells move and undergo massive population expansion by cell division within self-growing mesenchymal tissue. We show that single ENC cells labelled to follow clonality in the intestine reveal extraordinary and unpredictable variation in number and position of descendant cells, even though ENS development is highly predictable at the population level. We use an agent based model to simulate ENC colonization and obtain agent lineage tracing data, which we analyse using e..