title: Siphons in chemical reaction networks.
abstract: Siphons in a chemical reaction system are subsets of the species that have the potential of being absent in a steady state. We present a characterization of minimal siphons in terms of primary decomposition of binomial ideals, we explore the underlying geometry, and we demonstrate the effective computation of siphons using computer algebra software. This leads to a new method for determining whether given initial concentrations allow for various boundary steady states.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA, annejls@math.berkeley.edu
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shiu
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sturmfels
mesh_terms: D016010:Binomial Distribution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D008956:Models, Chemical; D012984:Software; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods*