The combined effects of Feller diffusion and transcriptional/translational bursting in simple gene networks

Abstract

We study a stochastic model of biosynthesis of proteins in generic bacterial operons. The stochasticity arises from two different processes, namely from `bursting' production of either mRNA and/or protein (in the transcription/translation process) and from standard diffusive fluctuations. The amount of protein follows the Feller diffusion, while the bursting introduces random jumps between trajectories of the diffusion process. The combined effect leads to a process commonly known as a diffusion process with jumps. We study existence of invariant densities and the long time behavior of distributions of the corresponding Markov process, proving asymptotic stability in the evolution of the density.