Validity conditions for quasi steady state approximations
In modelling enzyme catalyzed reactions in biochemistry, the application of the law of mass action kinetics results in large models due to the presence of intermediate enzyme complexes in the reaction mechanisms. The quasi steady state approximation (QSSA) is considered a standard approach for simplification of mass action models of enzyme kinetic reaction networks. Since it leads to an approximation of the original mass action model of an enzyme kinetic reaction network, this approximation is valid only under certain specific conditions. Although these conditions are established and well known for simple enzyme kinetic networks, for more complicated enzyme kinetic networks, validity conditions for QSSA are not known. The aim of the project is to obtain the validity conditions for complex enzyme kinetic reaction networks using the principle of quasi steady state hypothesis and to prove the sufficiency of these conditions using singular perturbation techniques and center manifold theory.