Fig. 2

In the absence of drug, the number of cells and the level of intrapopulation heterogeneity at equilibrium depend on the rate of random epimutations and on the strength of natural selection. Plot of the total number of cells \(\overline {\rho }\) (panel a) and the level of intrapopulation heterogeneity \(\overline {\sigma }^{2}\) (panel b) associated with the equilibrium phenotypic distribution as a function of the epimutation rate β (in units of 10⁻²) and the selection gradient η. The values of the other model parameters are as in Table 1