Human cerebral tissue growth is a critical process

Abstract

We develop a Fokker-Planck theory of tissue growth with three types of cells (symmetrically dividing, asymmetrically dividing and non-dividing) as main agents to study the growth dynamics of human cerebral organoids. Fitting the theory to lineage tracing data obtained in next generation sequencing experiments, we show that the growth of cerebral organoids is a self organized critical (SOC) process. We derive analytical expressions describing the evolution of clonal lineage sizes and discuss possible organizational mechanisms behind the critical growth.