Limited resources in a driven diffusion process

The advance of particles in many driven diffusion systems depends on the availability of resources in the surrounding environment. In the balance between supply and demand of such resources we are confronted with a regime in which, under limited resource availability, the flow is markedly reduced. In the context of mRNA translation this represents the finite availability of amino acid-tRNA molecules. In this limited resources regime a severe depletion of amino acid tRNAs is also observed. These dramatic effects are vital to our understanding of translation, and are likely to also be important for the many other applications of driven diffusion models.