A systems biology study to understand the dynamics of progenitor cells populations in the tissue development
Title (trans.)
Un estudio de biología de sistemas para entender la dinámica de poblaciones de células progenitoras en la formación de tejidos durante el desarrollo embrionarioAuthor
Ledesma Terrón, Mario
Advisor
Miguez Gómez, David
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada; Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBM)Date
2021-04-15Subjects
Genética del desarrollo; Células madre; Biología de sistemas; FísicaNote
Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada. Fecha de lectura: 15-04-2021Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 15-04-2022

Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 4.0 Internacional.
Abstract
Embryonic development begins with a cell formed by the union of two sex cells, and ends with
a multicellular organism with specialized and diverse functions and shapes. Organogenesis is the
integration of spatial and temporal programs with the purpose to generate the mature version of
the organ. Concretely, some tissues as the Neural Retina, the Pigmentary Epithelium of the Retina,
the Spinal Cord or the Neocortex comes from the anterior region of the neural tube, a structure
whose origin is the anterior axis of the embryonic layer of the ectoderm (neuroectoderm). For an
important part of all these tissues, the molecular processes that underlie cellular decisions have
been extensively characterized. Basically, three activities must happen in the tissue development:
the growing in size (proliferation), the specialization in one or more specific functions (differentiate)
and the coordination of cell movements to acquire a specific final shape (morphogenesis).
Progenitor cells are those cells that have the ability to divide and increase the number of cells,
while differentiated cells are those that have acquired a specific function and they are not able to
divide into new cells. The action of the whole set of progenitor cells is the responsible to regulate
the number of new differentiated and progenitor cells (proliferation), while the sets of differentiated
cells is the responsible of the acquisition of specific function. In fact, the function of the
organ and the ability to increase in growth or produce more cells (i.e balance between growth and
differentiation) can not only be interpreted as the sum of function of each cell. Therefore, research
about the behaviour, regulation and properties for all populations of progenitor cells is key to
understanding the balance between proliferation (the system generates new progenitor cells) and
differentiation (the system generates new differentiated cells) of the embryo development. The
descents of the progenitor cells pool along the development regulates the rate between proliferation
and differentiation of the tissue. Therefore, it is not only essential to understand the biology
of progenitor and differentiated cells, but it is also essential to understand how the union of many
progenitor cells works to form a complex system, such as a tissue or an organ. In this thesis, I
will intend to answer two major questions: how the proliferation and differentiation of progenitor
cell pools is regulated in space-time? And how can we use quantitative tools to analyze this
balance?. To do this, we have used two model organisms (Danio rerio and Mus musculus), a theoretical
approach based on Markov’s chains, and we have developed computational analysis tools
for biological images
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