Concordant chemical reaction networks

We describe a large class of chemical reaction networks, those endowed with a subtle structural property called concordance. We show, that the class of concordant networks coincides precisely with the class of networks which, when taken with any weakly monotonic kinetics, invariably give rise to kinetic systems that are injective - a quality that, among other things, precludes the possibility of switch-like transitions between distinct positive steady states. We also provide persistence characteristics of concordant networks, instability implications of discordance, and consequences of stronger variants of concordance. Some of our results are in the spirit of recent ones by Banaji and Craciun, but here we do not require that every species suffer a degradation reaction. This is especially important in studying biochemical networks, for which it is rare to have all species degrade. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.