Lag time in microbe growth as an age-dependent branching process with two phase types

We study a two-type, age-dependent branching process in which the branching probabilities of one of the types may vary with time. Specifically this modification of the Bellman-Harris process starts with a Type I particle which may either die or change to a Type II particle depending upon a time varying probability. A Type II particle may either die or reproduce with fixed probabilities but may not return to a particle of Type I. In this way the process models the lag phenomenon observed in microbe growth subsequent to transfer to a new culture medium while the organism is adapting to its new environment. We show that if the mean reproduction rate of Type II particles exceeds 1, then the population size grows exponentially. Further the extinction probability for this process is related to that of the Bellman-Harris process. Finally the governing equations are solved for several choices of the growth parameters and the solutions are graphically displayed showing that a wide variety of behavior can be modeled by this process.