Modeling development and disease in the enteric nervous system

Abstract

The enteric nervous system (ENS) in our gastrointestinal tract is responsible for normal gut function, including peristaltic contraction. Embryonic development of the ENS involves the colonization of the gut wall from one end to the other by a population of proliferating neural crest (NC) cells. Failure of these cells to invade the whole gut results in the relatively common, potentially fatal condition known as Hirschsprung disease (HSCR). Probabilistic cellular automata (CA) models provide insight into the colonization process. At the population level, the results exhibit an organised colonization wave, which extends through frontal expansion. Under a certain range of proliferation probabil..