Monomolecular reaction networks: Flux‐influenced sets and balloons

摘要

> In living cells, we can observe a variety of complex network systems such as metabolic network. Studying their sensitivity is one of the main approaches for understanding the dynamics of these biological systems. The study of the sensitivity is done by increasing/decreasing, or knocking out separately, each enzyme mediating a reaction in the system and then observing the responses in the concentrations of chemicals or their fluxes. However, because of the complexity of the systems, it has been unclear how the network structures influence/determine the responses of the systems. In this study, we focus on monomolecular networks at steady state and establish a simple criterion for determining regions of influence when any one of the reaction rates is perturbed through sensitivity experiments of enzyme knock‐out type. Specifically, we study the network response to perturbations of a reaction rate j ? and describe which other reaction rates j ′ respond by non‐zero reaction flux, at steady state. Non‐zero responses of j ′ to j