SYNCHRONIZATION OF CELL DIVISION

Most living organisms display many types of biological rhythms. We describe how a growing population of cells may be distributed between age classes or cell types, and define conditions necessary to produce synchronous population development. A probabilistic model describing the changes in cell numbers during proliferation is presented. The model predicts that during cell reproduction with constant parameters any cell population approaches a stationary behavior. According to this model, synchronization of cell growth is possible if there is a uniform parameter set for cell division. This point is illustrated by a set of graphs showing snapshots of model simulations with different parameter sets for transient and stationary behaviors.