MULTIPARAMETRIC BIFURCATIONS IN AN ENZYME-CATALYZED REACTION MODEL

An exhaustive analysis of local and global bifurcations in an enzyme-catalyzed reaction model is carried out. The model, given by a planar five-parameter system of autonomous ordinary differential equations, presents a great richness of bifurcations. This enzyme-catalyzed model has been considered previously by several authors, but they only detected a minimal part of the dynamical and bifurcation behavior exhibited by the system.

First, we study local bifurcations of equilibria up to codimension-three (saddle-node, cusps, nondegenerate and degenerate Hopf bifurcations, and nondegenerate and degenerate Bogdanov–Takens bifurcations) by using analytical and numerical techniques. The numerical continuation of curves of global bifurcations allows to improve the results provided by the study of local bifurcations of equilibria and to detect new homoclinic connections of codimension-three. Our analysis shows that such a system exhibits up to sixteen different kinds of homoclinic orbits and thirty different configurations of equilibria and periodic orbits. The coexistence of up to five periodic orbits is also pointed out. Several bifurcation sets are sketched in order to show the dynamical behavior the system exhibits. The different codimension-one and -two bifurcations are organized around five codimension-three degeneracies.