A new system-theoretic approach for studying the stability and control of chemical reaction networks (CRNs) is proposed, and analyzed. This has direct application to biological applications where biochemical networks suffer from high uncertainty in the kinetic parameters and exact structure of the rate functions. The proposed approach tackles this issue by presenting ``structural'' results, i.e. results that extract important qualitative information from the structure alone regardless of the specific form the kinetics which can be arbitrary montone kinetics, including Mass-Action.

The proposed method is based on introducing a class of Lyapunov functions that we call Piecewise Linear in Rates (PWLR) Lyapunov functions. Several algorithms are proposed for the construction of these functions.

Subject to mild technical conditions, the existence of this function can be used to ensure powerful dynamical and algebraic conditions such as Lyapunov stability, asymptotic stability, global asymptotic stability, persistence, uniqueness of equilibria and exponential contraction. This shows that this class of networks is well-behaved and excludes complicated behaviour such multi-stability, limit cycles and chaos.

The class of PWLR functions is later shown to be a subset of larger class of Robust Lyapunov functions (RLFs), which can be interpreted by shifting the analysis to reaction coordinates. In the new coordinates, the problem transforms into finding a common Lyapunov function for a linear parameter varying system. Consequently, dual forms of the PWLR Lyapunov functions are presented, and the interpretation in terms of the variational dynamics and contraction analysis are given. The other class of Piecewise Quadratic in Rates Lyapunov function is also introduced. Relationship with consensus dynamics are also pointed.

Control laws for the stabilization of  the proposed class are provided, and the concept of control Lyapunov function is briefly discussed. Finally, the proposed framework is shown to be widely applicable to biochemical networks.


 CAP People

  • Muhammad Ali Al-Radhawi
  • David Angeli