Article,

Unstable cores are the source of instability in chemical reaction networks

, and .
Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 480 (2285): 20230694 (2024)
DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2023.0694

Abstract

In biochemical networks, complex dynamical features such as superlinear growth and oscillations are classically considered a consequence of autocatalysis. For the large class of parameter-rich kinetic models, which includes generalized mass action kinetics and Michaelis–Menten kinetics, we show that certain submatrices of the stoichiometric matrix, so-called unstable cores, are sufficient for a reaction network to admit instability and potentially give rise to such complex dynamical behaviour. The determinant of the submatrix distinguishes unstable-positive feedbacks, with a single real-positive eigenvalue, and unstable-negative feedbacks without real-positive eigenvalues. Autocatalytic cores turn out to be exactly the unstable-positive feedbacks that are Metzler matrices. Thus there are sources of dynamical instability in chemical networks that are unrelated to autocatalysis. We use such intuition to design non-autocatalytic biochemical networks with superlinear growth and oscillations.

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