Autocatalytic reaction fronts between reacted and unreacted species may propagate as solitary waves, namely at a constant front velocity and with a stationary concentration profile, resulting from a balance between molecular diffusion and chemical reaction. A velocity field in the supporting medium may affect the propagation of such fronts through different phenomena: convection, diffusion enha...

1. The growth rate of organisms may be considered as a chemical reaction which gives the mature organism as its end-product. The organism grows at a definite rate which is, at any moment, proportional to the amount of growth yet to be made. 2. Shoots of young pear trees measured at weekly intervals during the growing season showed a rate similar to that of an autocatalytic reaction. 3. Young wa...

Autocatalytic kinetics are observed during the biphasic alkaline hydrolysis of C-4, C-6 and C-8 (butanoate, hexanoate and octanaoate) ethyl esters. Ethanol and alkanoate anions are the products of the reaction. A kinetic model including spontaneous dissolution of the organic phase into the aqueous phase, aqueous hydrolysis of the ester, formation of ester containing aggregates and micellisation...

The photorelease of a sensitizer from a fluorinated silica surface occurs by a reaction of singlet oxygen with the vinyl ether bond linker with scission of a dioxetane intermediate. Irradiation of the released sensitizer generates singlet oxygen, which accelerates the release of more sensitizer via an autocatalytic reaction. Sigmoidal behavior of sensitizer release in n-butanol and n-octanol oc...

The regulation of the cell cycle clock is examined using a theoretical model for the embryonic cell cycle, where the clock is described as a single-limit cycle [1]. By taking the coefficient of the autocatalytic reaction as proportional to the deviation of the system from its equilibrium state, we show how such clocks can be adjusted to function on several time scales. This feedback control, ca...

Theoretical investigations of autocatalytic sets rendered the occurrence of self-sustaining sets of molecules to be a generic property of random reaction networks. This stands in some contrast to the experimental difficulty to actually find such systems. In this work, we argue that the usual approach, which is based on the study of static properties of reaction graphs has to be complemented wit...