Figure 9. Stochastic system is robust to the binomial distribution of constituents at cell division.

(A) Schematic to show the difference between symmetric and asymmetric division. (B) The distribution of time to reach the low HES1 state with 50/50 initial conditions using deterministic dynamics as system size of $\mathrm{\Omega }$ = 50, 1 and 0.2, respectively. (C) The distribution of times to reach the low HES1 state of 3000 simulations with binomial initial conditions using deterministic dynamics at system size of $\mathrm{\Omega }$ = 50, 1 and 0.2, respectively. (D) The distribution of times to reach the low HES1 state of 3000 simulations with 50/50 initial conditions using the CLE at system size of $\mathrm{\Omega }$ = 50, 1 and 0.2, respectively. (E) The distribution of times to reach the low HES1 state of 3000 simulations with binomial initial conditions using the CLE at system size of $\mathrm{\Omega }$ = 50, 1 and 0.2, respectively. All simulations performed with parameter set 2 (Appendix 1—table 1) and initial conditions m(0) = 20x$\mathrm{\Omega }$, p(0) = 400x$\mathrm{\Omega }$ and r(0) = 0. The standard deviation of the distribution is denoted with ${\displaystyle \sigma }$. In the simulations shown, parent cells were simulated deterministically for 12 hr prior to 'division' however, the distributions remained statistically the same (p-value>0.05) when either 11 or 13 hr deterministic simulations prior to division were used (data not shown). MATLAB code contained in Figure 9—source data 1.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16118.039