Which small reaction networks are multistationary?

TL;DR

This paper classifies small reaction networks with few species or reactions that can exhibit multiple steady states, providing a complete answer for these minimal systems and highlighting the role of Newton polytopes.

Contribution

It completely characterizes multistationarity in the smallest reaction networks, extending prior work and emphasizing geometric network properties.

Findings

Complete classification of multistationary small networks

Identification of Newton polytope's role in multistationarity

Extension of previous results on network capacity for multiple steady states

Abstract

Reaction networks taken with mass-action kinetics arise in many settings, from epidemiology to population biology to systems of chemical reactions. Bistable reaction networks are posited to underlie biochemical switches, which motivates the following question: which reaction networks have the capacity for multiple steady states? Mathematically, this asks: among certain parametrized families of polynomial systems, which admit multiple positive roots? No complete answer is known. This work analyzes the smallest networks, those with only a few chemical species or reactions. For these "smallest" networks, we completely answer the question of multistationarity and, in some cases, multistability too, thereby extending related work of Boros. Our results highlight the role played by the Newton polytope of a network (the convex hull of the reactant vectors). Also, our work is motivated by recent results that explain how a given network's capacity for multistationarity arises from that of certain related networks which are typically smaller. Hence, we are interested in classifying small multistationary networks, and our work forms a first step in this direction.