Modelling expression patterns in cell lineage trees

A cell lineage tree represents the history of where and when fate is determined in a developing cell system. Phenotypic expression on these trees exhibits intricate patterns, reflecting the spatial and temporal coordination of factors contributing to morphology and cell fate. Increasingly, technological advances have enabled the lineage tracing of complex developmental systems. However, interpretation of these data is challenging since any analysis technique must respect the topology of the tree. Here we describe a multilevel statistical model which encodes the relationships in the lineage tree and naturally identifies key locations in the tree that influence cell fate. The technique has been benchmarked on published C. elegans data and applied to lineage tree data from mammalian immune cells.