Theoretical modelling discriminates the stochastic and deterministic hypothesis of cell reprogramming

How to induce differentiated cells into pluripotent cells has elicited researchers’ interests for a long time since pluripotent stem cells are able to offer remarkable potential in numerous subfields of biological research. However, the nature of cell reprogramming, especially the mechanisms still remain elusive for the sake of most protocols of inducing pluripotent stem cells were discovered by screening but not from the knowledge of gene regulation networks. Generally there are two hypotheses to elucidate the mechanism termed as elite model and stochastic model which regard reprogramming process a deterministic process or a stochastic process, respectively. However, the difference between these two models cannot yet be discriminated experimentally. Here we use a general mathematical model to elucidate the nature of cell reprogramming which can fit both hypotheses. We investigate this process from a novel perspective, the timing. We calculate the time of reprogramming in a general way and find that noise would play a significant role if the stochastic hypothesis holds. Thus the two hypotheses may be discriminated experimentally by counting the time of reprogramming in different magnitudes of noise. Because our approach is general, our results should facilitate broad studies of rational design of cell reprogramming protocols.