We study the asymptotic behaviour of a gradient system in a regime in which the driving energy becomes singular. For this system gradient-system convergence concepts are ineffective. We characterize the limiting behaviour in a different way, by proving $Gamma$-convergence of the so-called energy-dissipation functional, which combines the gradient-system components of energy and dissipation in a single functional. The $Gamma$-limit of these functionals again characterizes a variational evolution, but this limit functional is not the energy-dissipation functional of any gradient system. The system in question describes the diffusion of a particle in a one-dimensional double-well energy landscape, in the limit of small noise. The wells have different depth, and in the small-noise limit the process converges to a Markov process on a two-state system, in which jumps only happen from the higher to the lower well. This transmutation of a gradient system into a variational evolution of non-gradient type is a model for how many one-directional chemical reactions emerge as limit of reversible ones. The $Gamma$-convergence proved in this paper both identifies the `fate of the gradient system for these reactions and the variational structure of the limiting irreversible reactions.
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