Modeling active cellular transport as a directed search process with stochastic resetting and delays
File(s)directed(R).pdf (558.32 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Bressloff, Paul C
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We show how certain active transport processes in living cells can be modeled in terms of a directed search process with stochastic resetting and delays. Two particular examples are the motor-driven intracellular transport of vesicles to synaptic targets in the axons and dendrites of neurons, and the cytoneme-based transport of morphogen to target cells during embryonic development. In both cases, the restart of the search process following reset has a finite duration with two components: a finite return time and a refractory period. We use a probabilistic renewal method to explicitly calculate the splitting probabilities and conditional mean first passage times (MFPTs) for capture by a finite array of contiguous targets. We consider two different search scenarios: bounded search on the interval [0, L], where L is the length of the array, with a refractory boundary at x = 0 and a reflecting boundary at x = L (model A), and partially bounded search on the half-line (model B). In the latter case there is a non-zero probability of failure to find a target in the absence of resetting. We show that both models have the same splitting probabilities, and that increasing the resetting rate r increases (reduces) the splitting probability for proximal (distal) targets. On the other hand the MFPTs for model A are monotonically increasing functions of r, whereas the MFPTs of model B are non-monotonic with a minimum at an optimal resetting rate. We also formulate multiple rounds of search-and-capture events as a G/M/∞ queue and use this to calculate the steady-state accumulation of resources in the targets.
Date Issued
2020-09-04
Date Acceptance
2020-06-24
Citation
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 2020, 53 (35)
ISSN
1751-8113
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Volume
53
Issue
35
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.1088/1751-8121/ab9fb7
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/ab9fb7
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
355001
Date Publish Online
2020-08-12