Multiscale Reaction Networks Research Articles

Sensitivity Analysis for Multiscale Stochastic Reaction Networks Using Hybrid Approximations.

We consider the problem of estimating parameter sensitivities for stochastic models of multiscale reaction networks. These sensitivity values are important for model analysis, and the methods that currently exist for sensitivity estimation mostly rely on simulations of the stochastic dynamics. This is problematic because these simulations become computationally infeasible for multiscale networks due to reactions firing at several different timescales. However it is often possible to exploit the multiscale property to derive a "model reduction" and approximate the dynamics as a Piecewise deterministic Markov process, which is a hybrid process consisting of both discrete and continuous components. The aim of this paper is to show that such PDMP approximations can be used to accurately and efficiently estimate the parameter sensitivity for the original multiscale stochastic model. We prove the convergence of the original sensitivity to the corresponding PDMP sensitivity, in the limit where the PDMP approximation becomes exact. Moreover, we establish a representation of the PDMP parameter sensitivity that separates the contributions of discrete and continuous components in the dynamics and allows one to efficiently estimate both contributions.

Elimination of intermediate species in multiscale stochastic reaction networks

We study networks of biochemical reactions modelled by continuous-time Markov processes. Such networks typically contain many molecular species and reactions and are hard to study analytically as well as by simulation. Particularly, we are interested in reaction networks with intermediate species such as the substrate-enzyme complex in the Michaelis-Menten mechanism. These species are virtually in all real-world networks, they are typically short-lived, degraded at a fast rate and hard to observe experimentally. We provide conditions under which the Markov process of a multiscale reaction network with intermediate species is approximated in finite dimensional distribution by the Markov process of a simpler reduced reaction network without intermediate species. We do so by embedding the Markov processes into a one-parameter family of processes, where reaction rates and species abundances are scaled in the parameter. Further, we show that there are close links between these stochastic models and deterministic ODE models of the same networks.

Asymptotology of chemical reaction networks

The concept of the limiting step is extended to the asymptotology of multiscale reaction networks. Complete theory for linear networks with well separated reaction rate constants is developed. We present algorithms for explicit approximations of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of kinetic matrix. Accuracy of estimates is proven. Performance of the algorithms is demonstrated on simple examples. Application of algorithms to nonlinear systems is discussed.

A new class of highly efficient exact stochastic simulation algorithms for chemical reaction networks

We introduce an alternative formulation of the exact stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA) for sampling trajectories of the chemical master equation for a well-stirred system of coupled chemical reactions. Our formulation is based on factored-out, partial reaction propensities. This novel exact SSA, called the partial-propensity direct method (PDM), is highly efficient and has a computational cost that scales at most linearly with the number of chemical species, irrespective of the degree of coupling of the reaction network. In addition, we propose a sorting variant, SPDM, which is especially efficient for multiscale reaction networks.