Data from computer simulation of neutral drift among limbal epithelial stem cells of mosaic mice

The data comprise the source code for the simulation program and data from 154 sets of simulations (20 simulations per set) grouped into parts 1-9. Data from simulations comprise PNG images and raw data (CSV files) of individual simulations plus Excel workbooks with summaries of numerical data. There are also word and pdf versions of a 'Read-me' file, which provides some explanatory notes about the data, and a file, which explains some abbreviations and the file structure.

It was previously shown that limbal epithelial stem cells (LESCs) around the periphery of the cornea maintain radial sectors of the corneal epithelium but that radial stripe numbers declined with age in mosaic mice. Originally, these results were interpreted as progressive, age-related loss or irreversible inactivation of some clones of LESCs. We used computer simulations to show that these results could also be explained by stochastic replacement of LESCs by neighbouring LESCs, leading to neutral drift of LESC populations. This was shown to reduce the number of coherent clones of LESCs and hence would coarsen the mosaic pattern in the corneal epithelium without reducing the absolute number of LESCs. Simulations also showed that corrected stripe numbers declined more slowly when LESCs were grouped, non-randomly and that mosaicism was rarely lost unless simulated LESC numbers were unrealistically low.

West, John D; Mort, Richard L; Hill, Robert E; Morley, Steven D; Collinson, J Martin. (2018). Data from computer simulation of neutral drift among limbal epithelial stem cells of mosaic mice, [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh Medical School. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/2345