MIGHT STOCHASTICITY AND SAMPLING VARIATION BE A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR VARIATION IN CLONAL POPULATION SURVIVAL CURVES

Biogerontological survival analysis attempts to understand, through th e use of mathematical and computer models, how biological and environm ental processes affect the dynamics of survival. The survival model pa rameters are assumed to reflect an average or mean response to some in tervention. Further, these parameters are usually assumed to be consta nt over the time course of the experiment and across the elements of t he experimental cohort. In this paper, we introduce stochastic (random ) features to the survival curve parameters and we observe how this mi ght affect our interpretation of the biology; as reflected in the esti mates of the model parameters. In particular, we provide a possible ex planation for variation in parameter estimates within sample populatio ns drawn from a population of genetic clones.