Input-to-state stability-based chemical reaction networks composition for molecular computations

Abstract

Molecular computation based on chemical reaction networks (CRNs) has emerged as a promising paradigm for designing programmable biochemical systems. However, the implementation of complex computations still requires excessively large and intricate network structures, largely due to the limited understanding of composability, that is, how multiple subsystems can be coupled while preserving computational functionality. Existing composability frameworks primarily focus on rate-independent CRNs, whose computational capabilities are severely restricted. This article aims to establish a systematic framework for composable CRNs governed by mass-action kinetics, a common type of rate-dependent CRNs. Drawing upon the concepts of composable rate-independent CRNs, we introduce the notions of mass-action chemical reaction computers (msCRCs), dynamic computation and dynamic composability to establish a rigorous mathematical framework for composing two or more msCRCs to achieve layer-by-layer computation of composite functions. Further, we derive several sufficient conditions based on the notions of input-to-state stability (ISS) to characterize msCRCs that can be composed to implement desired molecular computations, thereby providing theoretical support for this framework. Some examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency of our method. Finally, comparative results demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits notable advantages in both computational ability and accuracy over the state-of-the-art methods.