Team:Paris Bettencourt/tRNA diffusion/Random walker

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Team IGEM Paris 2011

This model is very similar to the one used in [2]. We consider that the particle diffusing in the cell is a random walker.


We want to see how long it takes for a particle of a given size to diffuse to any point of a cell. We use the following parameters:

  • V volume of the cell (10-18 m3)
  • characteristic size of the particle (m)
  • D diffusion coefficient of the particle (m2.s-1)

We divide the cytoplasm volume V into occupation sites for the walker. The characteristic time associated with the transition from one site to another is: [3]

If we have R walkers of this type, the probability that a molecule arrives at a given occupation site during the time interval is: .