Regular phase in a model of microtubule growth.

Abstract

We study a continuous-time stochastic process on strings made of two types of particles, whose dynamics mimics the behaviour of microtubules in a living cell; namely, the strings evolve via a competition between (local) growth/shrinking as well as (global)hydrolysis processes. We show that the velocity of the string end, which determines the long-term behaviour of the system, depends analytically on the growth and shrinking rates. We also identify a region in the parameter space where the velocity is a strictly monotone function of the rates. The argument is based on stochastic domination, large deviations estimates, cluster expansions and semi-martingale techniques.