Monte Carlo approach to tissue-cell populations

We describe a stochastic dynamics of tissue cells with special emphasis on epithelial cells and fibro- blasts and fibrocytes of the connective tissue. Pattern formation and growth characteristics of such cell populations in culture are investigated numerically by Monte Carlo simulations for quasi-two-dimensional systems of cells. A number of quantitative predictions are obtained which may be confronted with experimental results. Furthermore we introduce several biologically motivated variants of our basic model and briefly discuss the simulation of two dimensional analogs of two complex processes in tissues: the growth of a sarcoma across an epithelial boundary and the wound healing of a skin cut. As compared to other approaches, we find the Monte Carlo approach to tissue growth and structure to be particularly simple and flexible. It allows for a hierarchy of models reaching from global description of birth-death processes to very specific features of intracellular dynamics. (c) 1995 The American Physical Society