Continuous Time Markov Chain Models for Chemical Reaction Networks

A reaction network is a chemical system involving multiple reactions and chemical species. The simplest stochastic models of such networks treat the system as a continuous time Markov chain with the state being the number of molecules of each species and with reactions modeled as possible transitions of the chain. This chapter is devoted to the mathematical study of such stochastic models. We begin by developing much of the mathematical machinery we need to describe the stochastic models we are most interested in. We show how one can represent counting processes of the type we need in terms of Poisson processes. This random time-change representation gives a stochastic equation for continuoustime Markov chain models. We include a discussion on the relationship between this stochastic equation and the corresponding martingale problem and Kolmogorov forward (master) equation. Next, we exploit ∗Research supported in part by NSF grant DMS 05-53687 †Research supported in part by NSF grants DMS 05-53687 and DMS 08-05793