Room P3.10, Mathematics Building

Bernold Fiedler, Free University of Berlin
Chemical and metabolic networks: sense and sensitivity

For the deceptively innocent case of monomolecular reactions, only, we embark on a systematic mathematical analysis of the steady state response to perturbations of reaction rates. We make sense of this response in terms of the sensitivity of (experimentally accessible) concentrations and (invisible) reaction fluxes. Our function-free approach does not require numerical input. Based on the directed graph structure of the monomolecular reaction network, only, we derive which steady state concentrations and reaction fluxes are sensitive to a rate change, and which are not. Moreover, we establish a transitivity property for the sensitivity of reaction fluxes. The results and concepts are motivated by — and of experimental relevance to — specific metabolic networks in biology, including the ubiquitous tricarboxylic citric acid cycle.

This is joint work with Atsushi Mochizuki (RIKEN Tokyo).