Room P3.10, Mathematics Building

Nicola Vassena, Free University Berlin
Introduction to sensitivity of chemical reaction networks

This talk is an introductory overview of my research topic: Sensitivity of Networks.

We address the following questions: How does a dynamical network respond to perturbations of equilibrium - qualitatively? How does a perturbation of a targeted component spread in the network? What is the sign of the response?

In more detail, we consider general systems of differential equations inspired from chemical reaction networks: $dx/dt = S r(x)$. Here, $x$ might be interpreted as the vector of the concentrations of chemicals, $S$ is the stoichiometric matrix and $r(x)$ is the vector of reaction functions, which we consider as positive given parameters. Abstractly - for a given directed network: the vector $x$ represents the vertices, the matrix $S$ is the incidence matrix and the vector $r(x)$ refers to the directed arrows.

Sensitivity studies the response of equilibrium solutions to perturbations of reaction rate functions, using the network structure as ONLY data. We give here an introduction of the results and techniques developed through this structural approach.

Projecto FCT UID/MAT/04459/2019.