The Tenth q-bio Summer School - Albuquerque: Computer Lab 17

A Markovian approach for modelling biochemical reactions: analysis of stochastic performance measures

Martin Lopez Garcia, University of Leeds

Abstract for Lecture: Our interest in this lecture is to give an introduction on the usage of stochastic processes, and in particular continuous-time Markov chains, for modelling systems in Biology, with particular focus on biochemical reactions. In this lecture we will give the definition of a stochastic process and a Markov process, we will explain the usual objectives when analysing a Markov process in applications, and we will present the Chemical Master Equation (CME). Since the CME has, in general, no explicit solution, we explain in this lecture how to learn about the dynamics of the system while sidestepping the analysis of the CME, by studying a number of stochastic performance measures. Our case-study will be related to a process called Kinetic Proofreading, and the phosphorylation of receptor tyrosine kinases.