Asymmetric exclusion process as a model for protein synthesis

Messenger RNA translation is often studied by means of statistical-mechanical models based on the Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (ASEP), which considers hopping particles (the ribosomes) on a lattice (the polynucleotide chain). In this seminar, I will first describe the underlying biological process, then I introduce the model and briefly present the known results. In more detail, I use a mean-field approach to study the dynamics of particles associated with an internal stepping cycle. This particular case is biologically relevant since it includes the two fundamental steps of the ribosome's biochemical cycle into the model.