Tractable models of self-sustaining autocatalytic networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simplified, graph-theoretic framework for studying autocatalytic networks, enabling polynomial-time algorithms for problems that are NP-hard in general, and extends classical theory to more complex, generative, and rate-assigned systems.

Contribution

It develops a simplified mathematical model of RAFs that allows for efficient algorithms and extends the theory to generative and rate-based catalytic networks.

Findings

Polynomial-time algorithms for RAF questions.

Extension of RAF theory to generative and rate-based systems.

Framework applicable to biological and ecological networks.

Abstract

Self-sustaining autocatalytic networks play a central role in living systems, from metabolism at the origin of life, simple RNA networks, and the modern cell, to ecology and cognition. A collectively autocatalytic network that can be sustained from an ambient food set is also referred to more formally as a `Reflexively Autocatalytic F-generated' (RAF) set. In this paper, we first investigate a simplified setting for studying RAFs, which are nevertheless relevant to real biochemistry and allows for a more exact mathematical analysis based on graph-theoretic concepts. This, in turn, allows for the development of efficient (polynomial-time) algorithms for questions that are computationally NP-hard in the general RAF setting. We then show how this simplified setting for RAF systems leads naturally to a more general notion of RAFs that are `generative' (they can be built up from simpler RAFs) and for which efficient algorithms carry over to this more general setting. Finally, we show how classical RAF theory can be extended to deal with ensembles of catalysts as well as the assignment of rates to reactions according to which catalysts (or combinations of catalysts) are available.