Complexity results for autocatalytic network models

Abstract

A key step in the origin of life is the emergence of a primitive metabolism. This requires the formation of a subset of chemical reactions that is both self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic. A generic approach to study such processes (‘RAF theory’) has provided a precise and computationally effective way to address these questions, both on simulated data and in laboratory studies. In this paper, we solve some questions posed in more recent papers concerning the computational complexity of some key questions in RAF theory. In particular, although there is a fast algorithm to determine whether or not a catalytic reaction network contains a subset that is both self-sustaining and autocatalytic (and, if so, find one), determining whether or not sets exist that satisfy certain additional constraints turns out to be NP-hard.