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In this work, we consider the reversible reaction between reactants of species A and B to form the product C. We consider this reaction as a prototype of many pseudobiomolecular reactions in biology, such as for instance molecular motors. We derive the exact probability density for the stochastic waiting time that a molecule of species A needs until the reaction with a molecule of species B takes place. We perform this computation taking fully into account the stochastic fluctuations in the number of molecules of species B. We show that at low numbers of participating molecules, the exact probability density differs from the exponential density derived by assuming the law of mass action. Finally, we discuss the condition of detailed balance in the exact stochastic and in the approximate treatment.
We say that (weak/strong) time duality holds for continuous time quasi-birth-and-death-processes if, starting from a fixed level, the first hitting time of the next upper level and the first hitting time of the next lower level have the same distribution. We present here a criterion for time duality in the case where transitions from one level to another have to pass through a given single state, the so-called bottleneck property. We also prove that a weaker form of reversibility called balanced under permutation is sufficient for the time duality to hold. We then discuss the general case.