Many reaction networks arising in applications are multistationary, that is, they have the capacity for more than one steady state, while some networks exhibit absolute concentration robustness (ACR), which means that some species concentration is the same at all steady states. Both multistationarity and ACR are significant in biological settings, but only recently has attention focused on the possibility for these properties to coexist. Our main result states that such coexistence in at-most-bimolecular networks (which encompass most networks arising in biology) requires at least three species, five complexes and three reactions. We prove additional bounds on the number of reactions for general networks based on the number of linear conservation laws. Finally, we prove that, outside of a few exceptional cases, ACR is equivalent to non-multistationarity for bimolecular networks that are small (more precisely, one-dimensional or up to two species). Our proofs involve analyses of systems of sparse polynomials, and we also use classical results from chemical reaction network theory.

It is standard in chemistry to represent a sequence of reactions by a single overall reaction, often called a complex reaction in contrast to an elementary reaction. Photosynthesis $6 \text{CO}_2+6 \text{H}_2\text{O} \longrightarrow \text{C}_6\text{H}_{12}\text{O}_6 + 6 \text{O}_2$ is an example of such complex reaction. We introduce a mathematical operation that corresponds to summing two chemical reactions. Specifically, we define an associative and non-communicative operation on the product space ${\mathbb{N}}_0^n\times {\mathbb{N}}_0^n$ (representing the reactant and the product of a chemical reaction, respectively). The operation models the overall effect of two reactions happening in succession, one after the other. We study the algebraic properties of the operation and apply the results to stochastic reaction networks (RNs), in particular to reachability of states, and to reduction of RNs.

Detailed balance of a chemical reaction network can be defined in several different ways. Here we investigate the relationship among four types of detailed balance conditions: deterministic, stochastic, local, and zero-order local detailed balance. We show that the four types of detailed balance are equivalent when different reactions lead to different species changes and are not equivalent when some different reactions lead to the same species change. Under the condition of local detailed balance, we further show that the system has a global potential defined over the whole space, which plays a central role in the large deviation theory and the Freidlin–Wentzell-type metastability theory of chemical reaction networks. Finally, we provide a new sufficient condition for stochastic detailed balance, which is applied to construct a class of high-dimensional chemical reaction networks that both satisfies stochastic detailed balance and displays multistability.

Chemical reaction networks describe interactions between biochemical species. Once an underlying reaction network is given for a biochemical system, the system dynamics can be modelled with various mathematical frameworks such as continuous-time Markov processes. In this manuscript, the identifiability of the underlying network structure with a given stochastic system dynamics is studied. It is shown that some data types related to the associated stochastic dynamics can uniquely identify the underlying network structure as well as the system parameters. The accuracy of the presented network inference is investigated when given dynamical data are obtained via stochastic simulations.

This article studies propagating traveling waves in a class of reaction-diffusion systems which model isothermal autocatalytic chemical reactions as well as microbial growth and competition in a flow reactor. In the context of isothermal autocatalytic systems, two different cases will be studied. The first is autocatalytic chemical reaction of order m without decay. The second is chemical reaction of order m with a decay of order n, where m and n are positive integers and m>n≥1. A typical system in autocatalysis is A+2B→3B and B→C involving two chemical species, a reactant A and an auto-catalyst B and C an inert chemical species.

The numerical computation gives more accurate estimates on minimum speed of traveling waves for autocatalytic reaction without decay, providing useful insight in the study of stability of traveling waves.

For autocatalytic reaction of order m = 2 with linear decay n = 1, which has a particular important role in chemical waves, it is shown numerically that there exist multiple traveling waves with 1, 2 and 3 peaks with certain choices of parameters.

In this paper, we focus on the process of mass transfer in the rotating disk apparatus formulated as a Stefan problem with consideration given to both the hydrodynamics of the process and the specific chemical reactions occurring in the bulk. The wide range in the reaction rates of the underlying chemistry allows for a natural decoupling of the problem into a simplified set of weakly coupled convective–reaction–diffusion equations for the slowly reacting chemical species and a set of algebraic relations for the species that react rapidly. An analysis of the chemical equilibrium conditions identifies an expansion parameter and a reduced model that remains valid for arbitrarily large times. Numerical solutions of the model are compared to an asymptotic analysis revealing three distinct time scales and chemical diffusion boundary layer that lies completely inside the hydrodynamic layer. Formulated as a Stefan problem, the model generalizes the work of Levich (Levich and Spalding (1962) Physicochemical hydrodynamics, vol. 689, Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ) and will help better understand the natural limitations of the rotating disk reaction vessel when consideration is made for the reacting chemical species.

We study a model arising in chemistry where n elements numbered 1, 2, …, n are randomly permuted and if i is immediately to the left of i + 1 then they become stuck together to form a cluster. The resulting clusters are then numbered and considered as elements, and this process keeps repeating until only a single cluster is remaining. In this article we study properties of the distribution of the number of permutations required.

It is shown that the method of deriving bounds on the rate of convergence for birth–death processes developed by Zeifman can be effectively applied to stochastic models of chemical reactions.