TY - JOUR T1 - A Comprehensive Model of the Spatio-Temporal Stem Cell and Tissue Organisation in the Intestinal Crypt A1 - Buske, Peter A1 - Galle, Jörg A1 - Barker, Nick A1 - Aust, Gabriela A1 - Clevers, Hans A1 - Loeffler, Markus Y1 - 2011/01/06 N2 - Author Summary In the murine small intestine there are more than a million organized groups of proliferating cells, the crypts, each of which contains about 250–300 cells. About 60% of these cells are in rapid cycle. The functional stem cells of this tissue have been demonstrated to reside at defined positions at the lower third of the crypt and to give rise to four different cell types. Considering this simple structure the murine intestine is an ideal system to study general aspects of tissue organization. Here, we introduce a comprehensive and predictive computer model of the spatio-temporal organization of the murine intestine which describes how cell production and cell fate decisions could be organized in steady state as well as under perturbations. The model is based on single cells acting as individual agents, updating their status within a certain set of options governed by some active rules and on signals received from the environment. This kind of self-organization enables effective tissue regeneration without assuming an explicit stem cell population that maintains itself by asymmetric division. Thus, the model offers a novel systems biological view on crypt stem cell and tissue organisation. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 7 IS - 1 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1001045 SP - e1001045 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1001045 ER -