The most significant outcome of our studies conducted under the auspices of NIH/NINDS Grant RO1 NS39511 is a stochastic model of in vitro development of oligodendrocytes, which has been tested against several sets of experimental data. New estimation techniques built on this model allow analysis of the underlying processes in terms of biologically meaningful parameters. These results provide a solid groundwork for designing inferential procedures that are very much needed to analyze relevant in vivo studies. The general objective of the proposed research is to evolve such procedures with a special focus on embryonic development of the spinal cord. The major challenge here is that the dynamics of oligodendrocyte precursors in the developing spinal cord are highly non-stationary. A combination of analytical and simulation techniques is proposed as a constructive solution to this problem. Our recent analytical results make the problem approachable. The proposed stochastic model is sufficiently flexible to describe the complex patterns of cell dynamics in the experimental system under study. Biological experiments will be specially designed to fully utilize the power of the proposed modeling techniques and computational algorithms. This approach will provide a detailed understanding of cell development in the normal spinal cord, and in the pathological condition of iron deficiency.
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