Asymmetric autocatalytic reactions and their stationary distribution

Abstract

We consider a general class of autocatalytic reactions, which has been shown to display stochastic switching behaviour (discreteness-induced transitions (DITs)) in some parameter regimes. This behaviour was shown to occur either when the overall species count is low or when the rate of inflow and outflow of species is relatively much smaller than the rate of autocatalytic reactions. The long-term behaviour of this class was analysed in Bibbona et al. (Bibbona et al. 2020 J. R. Soc. Interface 17, 20200243 (doi:10.1098/rsif.2020.0243)) with an analytic formula for the stationary distribution in the symmetric case. We focus on the case of asymmetric autocatalytic reactions and provide a formula for an approximate stationary distribution of the model. We show this distribution has different properties corresponding to the distinct behaviour of the process in the three parameter regimes; in the DIT regime, the formula provides the fraction of time spent at each of the stable points.

Keywords

• reaction networks
• autocatalytic reactions
• stationary distribution
• discreteness-induced transitions
• Moran model
• genic selection