This paper concerns the long-term behavior of population systems, and in particular of chemical reaction systems, modeled by deterministic mass-action kinetics. We approach two important open problems in the field of Chemical Reaction Network Theory,
the Persistence Conjecture and the Global Attractor Conjecture. We study the persistence of a large class of networks called lower-endotactic and in particular, we show that in weakly reversible mass-action systems with two-dimensional stoichiometric subspace all bounded trajectories are persistent. Moreover, we use these ideas to show that the Global Attractor Conjecture is true for systems with three-dimensional stoichiometric subspace.
Persistence and permanence are properties of dynamical systems that describe the long-term behavior of the solutions, and in particular specify whether positive solutions approach the boundary of the positive orthant. Mass-action systems (or more gen
erally power-law systems) are very common in chemistry, biology, and engineering, and are often used to describe the dynamics in interaction networks. We prove that two-species mass-action systems derived from weakly reversible networks are both persistent and permanent, for any values of the reaction rate parameters. Moreover, we prove that a larger class of networks, called endotactic networks, also give rise to permanent systems, even if we allow the reaction rate parameters to vary in time. These results also apply to power-law systems and other nonlinear dynamical systems. In addition, ideas behind these results allow us to prove the Global Attractor Conjecture for three-species systems.
