title: Why metabolic systems are rarely chaotic.
abstract: One of the mysteries surrounding the phenomenon of chaos is that it can rarely be found in biological systems. This has led to many discussions of the possible presence and interpretation of chaos in biological signals. It has caused empirical biologists to be very sceptical of models that have chaotic properties or even employ chaos for problem solving tasks. In this paper, it is demonstrated that there exists a possible mechanism that is part of the catalytical reaction mechanisms which may be responsible for controlling enzymatic reactions such that they do not become chaotic. It is proposed that where these mechanisms are not present or not effective, chaos may still occur in biological systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing, Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley Campus, Oxford, UK. tvolde-scheper@brookes.ac.uk
authors.forename: Tjeerd
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: olde Scheper
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004798:Enzymes / Q000378:metabolism*; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D008954:Models, Biological; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes