Analysis of a Population Model Structured by the Cells Molecular Content
For mathematical biologists studying cell population dynamics, this provides rigorous analysis of a structured model, but the results are incremental extensions of prior work.
The paper analyzes a general cell division model structured by multiple internal variables, solving the eigenvalue problem and proving long-time convergence despite degenerate birth terms, with an extension to nonlinear problems showing subpolynomial population growth.
We study the mathematical properties of a general model of cell division structured with several internal variables. We begin with a simpler and specific model with two variables, we solve the eigenvalue problem with strong or weak assumptions, and deduce from it the long-time convergence. The main difficulty comes from natural degeneracy of birth terms that we overcome with a regularization technique. We then extend the results to the case with several parameters and recall the link between this simplified model and the one presented in \cite{CBBP1}; an application to the non-linear problem is also given, leading to robust subpolynomial growth of the total population.