On the Persistence and Global Stability of Mass-Action Systems

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, 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.