Unstable cores are the source of instability in chemical reaction networks

In biochemical networks, complex dynamical features such as superlinear growth and oscillations are classically considered a consequence of autocatalysis. For the large class of parameter-rich kinetic models, which includes generalized mass action kinetics and Michaelis–Menten kinetics, we show that certain submatrices of the stoichiometric matrix, so-called unstable cores, are sufficient for a reaction network to admit instability and potentially give rise to such complex dynamical behaviour. The determinant of the submatrix distinguishes unstable-positive feedbacks, with a single real-positive eigenvalue, and unstable-negative feedbacks without real-positive eigenvalues. Autocatalytic cores turn out to be exactly the unstable-positive feedbacks that are Metzler matrices. Thus there are sources of dynamical instability in chemical networks that are unrelated to autocatalysis. We use such intuition to design non-autocatalytic biochemical networks with superlinear growth and oscillations.