Identifiability and Distinguishability of General Reaction Systems

Abstract

Identifiability and distinguishability are essential uniqueness features of reaction schemes. Identifiability deals with the problem of determining whether an experiment is able to supply the desired information on the parameters of a model, whereas distinguishability examines the uniqueness of a kinetic model itself within a given class of competing models. Deterministic analysis, assuming error-free and continuous knowledge of measurable quantities, is a useful first step toward establishing uniqueness properties, because deterministic identifiability (distinguishability) is a necessary condition for their existence in any realistic experiment. Deterministic uniqueness conditions have been described in the literature only for first-order reaction systems. This paper extends the method to isothermal systems that include reactions of arbitrary order with mass-action-type rate equations. In contrast to the first-order case with relatively simple examples of unidentifiable and/or undistinguishable systems, all higher order schemes we have studied turned out to be both identifiable and distinguishable from other schemes in a deterministic sense when consideration is restricted to reasonable kinetic experiments. 17 refs., 1 fig., 2 tabs.