  We examine the dynamics of the translation stage of cellular protein
production, in which ribosomes move uni-directionally along mRNA strands
building an amino acid chain as they go. We describe the system using a timed
event graph - a class of Petri net useful for studying discrete events which
take a finite time. We use max-plus algebra to describe a deterministic version
of the model, calculating the protein production rate and density of ribosomes
on the mRNA. We find exact agreement between these analytical results and
numerical simulations of the deterministic case.
