Stationary distributions and positive recurrence of chemical reaction networks

Abstract:

Cellular, chemical, and population processes are all often represented via networks that describe the interactions between the different population types (typically called the “species”). If the counts of the species are low, then these systems are often modeled as continuous-time Markov chains on the d-dimensional integer lattice (with d being the number of species), with transition rates determined by stochastic mass-action kinetics. A natural (broad) mathematical question is: how do the qualitative properties of the dynamical system relate to the graph properties of the network? For example, it is of particular interest to know which graph properties imply that the stochastically modeled reaction network is positive recurrent, and therefore admits a stationary distribution. After a general introduction to the models of interest, I will discuss this problem, giving some of the known results. I will also discuss recent progress on the Chemical Recurrence Conjecture, which has been open for decades, which is the following: if each connected component of the network is strongly connected, then the associated stochastic model is positive recurrent.