Stochastically-induced bistability in chemical reaction systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how stochastic effects in a two-species chemical system can induce bistability through the interplay of drift and resampling mechanisms, revealing different bistable behaviors depending on interaction rates.

Contribution

It introduces a model demonstrating how stochastic perturbations can lead to bistability in chemical systems, highlighting the role of interaction rate ratios.

Findings

Stochastic interactions can induce bistability in bounded chemical systems.

Different dynamical signatures of bistability depend on interaction rate ratios.

Bistability arises from the combination of drift and resampling mechanisms.

Abstract

We study a stochastic two-species chemical reaction system with two mechanisms. One mechanism consists of chemical interactions which govern the overall drift of species amounts in the system; the other mechanism consists of resampling, branching or splitting which makes unbiased perturbative changes to species amounts. Our results show that in a system with a large but bounded capacity, certain combinations of these two types of interactions can lead to stochastically-induced bistability. Depending on the relative magnitudes of the rates of these two sets of interactions, bistability can occur in two distinct ways with different dynamical signatures.