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Figure 4 | BMC Medicine

Figure 4

From: Age-related human small intestine methylation: evidence for stem cell niches

Figure 4

Niche versus Immortal Stem Cells. A: Comparisons between niche (green) and immortal (red) stem cell simulations with CSX tags. Niche simulations assume a constant number of stem cell (from 4 to 256 stem cells per niche) and probabilities of asymmetric division (P1) from 0.98 to 0.89 (see Table 3). Outcomes of all niche simulations were similar and therefore one cannot be certain of the exact stem cell niche size. Immortal lineage simulations assume two stem cells per niche. Parameters (see Table 2) were otherwise identical between the simulations. Outcomes were more variable with niche simulations with wider 95% simulation intervals (dotted lines). The differences are most obvious with unique tags per crypt. B: Variances of unique CSX crypt tags per intestine (for example from Figure 2, Patient A had 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, and 5 unique tags per crypt for a variance of 1.1, and Patient M had 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, and 6 unique tags per crypt for a variance of 1.7). Simulations with the immortal lineage scenario (average is a solid red line, 95% intervals are dotted lines) were less consistent with the experimental data (circles) than the niche simulations (green lines).

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