Intermittent transport processes on surfaces

Overview & Synopsis

How do proteins find their way towards the rare places on DNA molecules where they need to go in order to perpetuate the life process ? Many recent works tend to show that only an intermittent dynamics, that is a dynamics with two or more regimes, allows this process. The main goal of this PhD is a rigorous study of a simplified model of intermittent dynamics. In this model the molecule alternates diffusion in the bulk with a different kind of diffusion on the surface until it reaches its target consisting in a small window on the surface. The time spent by the molecule on the surface is naturally modeled as following an exponential law with parameter λ. The main result of this thesis is to show that, whatever the parameters are, a pure bulk strategy is never optimal, thus reinforcing the hypothesis of intermittent dynamics. One also characterizes the case where the optimal timed is attained for λ > 0. The new mathematical tool is the introduction of a self-adjoint operator and the use of its orthonormal basis of eigenvectors. This tool allows to obtain a precise asymptotic behavior of the mean exit time for λ large. Besides that a new geometrical model is developed, called the torus model. This new model carries a new parameter, namely its modulus. It is shown in this thesis that for some values of the modulus the optimized exit time is significantly (allowing experimental checking for instance) shorter than the pure bulk search.