Exact and approximate solutions for spatial stochastic models of chemical systems
Mar 7, 2016 1420 views 
Stochastic effects in chemical reaction systems have been mostly studied via the chemical master equation, a non-spatial discrete stochastic formulation of chemical kinetics which assumes well-mixing and point-like interactions between molecules. These assumptions are in direct contrast with what experiments tells us about the nature of the intracellular environment, namely that diffusion plays a fundamental role in intracellular dynamics and that the environment itself is highly non-dilute (or crowded). I will here describe our recent work on obtaining (i) exact expressions for the solution of the reactiondiffusion master equation (RDME) and its crowded counterpart (cRDME) in equilibrium conditions and (ii) approximate expressions for the moments in non-equilibrium conditions. The solutions portray an emerging picture of the combined influence of diffusion and crowding on the stochastic properties of chemical reaction networks.