Paper 3, Section I, A

Mathematical Biology
Part II, 2013

An immune system creates a burst of NN new white blood cells with probability bb per unit time. White blood cells die with probability dd each per unit time. Write down the master equation for Pn(t)P_{n}(t), the probability that there are nn white blood cells at time tt.

Given that n=n0n=n_{0} initially, find an expression for the mean of nn.

Show that the variance of nn has the form Ae2dt+Bedt+CA e^{-2 d t}+B e^{-d t}+C and find A,BA, B and CC.

If the immune system were modified to produce kk times as many cells per burst but with probability per unit time divided by a factor kk, how would the mean and variance of the number of cells change?