A Spatial Mutation Model with Increasing Mutation Rates

Abstract: We consider a spatial model of cancer in which cells are points on the $d$-dimensional torus $\mathcal{T}=[0,L]^d$, and each cell with $k-1$ mutations acquires a $k$th mutation at rate $\mu_k$. We will assume that the mutation rates $\mu_k$ are increasing, and we find the asymptotic waiting time for the first cell to acquire $k$ mutations as the torus volume tends to infinity. This paper generalizes results on waiting for $k\geq 3$ mutations by Foo, Leder, and Schweinsberg, who considered the case in which all of the mutation rates $\mu_k$ were the same. In addition, we find the limiting distribution of the spatial distances between mutations for certain values of the mutation rates.