A Dynamic Study of Biochemical Self-Replication

Abstract

As it is well understood, in biological systems, small regulatory motifs are present at all scales, thus looking at simple negative feedback loops give us some information of how autocatalytic systems may be affected by regulation. For a single template self-replication, we consider a plausible mechanism, which we reduce to a 2-variable dimensionless set of ordinary differential equations, (ODE). The stability analysis of the steady states allows us to obtain exact relations to describe two-parameter bifurcation diagrams. We include a negative feedback to the reactants input to study the effect of regulation in biochemical self-replication. Surprisingly, the simpler regulation has the largest impact on the parameter space.

Keywords

• chemical self-replication
• chemical oscillations
• negative feedback
• Poincare sections