Wednesday 12 April 2006
German Enciso
Mathematical Biosciences Institute
Ohio State University
Determining the long-term behavior of large biochemical systems has proved to be a remarkably difficult problem. Yet these systems exhibit several characteristics that might make them amenable to study under the right perspective. One possible approach is their decomposition in terms of so-called monotone systems, which can be thought of as systems with exclusively positive feedback. In this talk I present part of the general framework of the theory (which was also the topic of a recent Theory Lunch talk by Eduardo Sontag). I also discuss some of the possible behaviors that may arise, including global attractivity towards an equilibrium and periodic oscillations for gene networks with delays.