The SNA analysis of a minimal model for bistability in the MAPK signaling cascade model

摘要

Successive phosphorylation cascades mediated by mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are known to act as switches initiating various cellular processes. In addition, models of the MAPK reaction network are displaying other nonlinear phenomena including bistability and periodic oscillations. Recently bistability has been explained as a consequence of interaction between single and double phosphorylation/dephosphorylation pathways in the Stage 2 subsystem of the Huang-Ferrell model of the MAPK and a core bistable model has been proposed. Here we focus on a detailed stability analysis of the steady states of this minimal model. The analysis uses methods of convex analysis and stoichiometric network theory.