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Updated: Aug 23, 2025

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
Published on: February 3, 2023
Evolution of a structured cell population endowed with plasticity of traits under constraints on and between the
Frank Ernesto Alvarez1, José Antonio Carrillo2, Jean Clairambault3
1CEREMADE (CNRS UMR no. 7534), PSL University, Université Paris - Dauphine, Place du Maréchal De Lattre De Tassigny, 75775, Paris CEDEX 16, France.
Abstract:
Confronted with the biological problem of managing plasticity in cell populations, which is in particular responsible for transient and reversible drug resistance in cancer, we propose a rationale consisting of an integro-differential and a reaction-advection-diffusion equation, the properties of which are studied theoretically and numerically. By using a constructive finite volume method, we show the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution and illustrate by numerical approximations and their simulations the capacity of the model to exhibit divergence of traits. This feature may be theoretically interpreted as describing a physiological step towards multicellularity in animal evolution and, closer to present-day clinical challenges in oncology, as a possible representation of bet hedging in cancer cell populations.
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