Computational methods for analyzing bistability in biochemical reaction networks

Bistability plays a key role in important biological processes, such as cell division, differentiation, and apoptosis. Examples show that there is a very delicate relationship between the structure of a reaction network and its capacity for bistable behavior. We describe mathematical methods that discriminate between networks that have the capacity for bistability and those that do not, as well as algorithms derived from these methods. We have implemented some of these algorithms in the software package BioNetX. We present results obtained by using this package to analyze random samples from a comprehensive database of reaction networks.