Agent based deterministic model of the adult subventricular neurogenesis

Abstract

There is a significant interest in studying adult subventricular neurogenesis to understand its biological function. Adult subventricular neurogenesis results in migration of neuronal precursors from subventricular zone to the olfactory bulb through the rostral migratory stream where they get converted to neurons. In this paper, we present a deterministic model of adult subventricular neurogenesis. This model captures the essence of neurogenesis by incorporating the neural stem cells, rapidly proliferating intermediate cells and the neurons. It also captures radial dispersion of neurons into the olfactory bulb. Our model incorporates stem cell death (apoptosis) over certain number of stem cell divisions resulting into reduction in the generation of neurons with time, which mimics aging. It demonstrates the steady production of sufficient number of neurons. We prove that our model of adult subventricular neurogenesis is biologically feasible and it overcomes the limitations of previously reported models. We believe that our model will help in devising experiments to further improve the understanding of adult subventricular neurogenesis.We have performed agent based simulation of the model proposed in this paper. The results of this simulation are given in the Appendix. This program is made available on a publicly accessible website.