A stochastic model of growing and dividing protocells

In the last two chapters we have shown several interesting results, which will now be brought together in a quite complete (albeit abstract) protocell model. In Chap. 3 we have studied how the presence of genetic memory molecules (GMMs) can affect the growth and fission rate of their lipid container, leading under quite broad assumptions to the important phenomenon of emergent synchronization, i.e. to a condition where protocell fission and duplication of its genetic material take place at the same pace. In that chapter, chemical kinetics has been described with deterministic differential equations (it has also been mentioned that synchronization is somewhat robust even if small fluctuations are considered).