Chaos and Hyperchaos in a Model of Ribosome Autocatalytic Synthesis

Abstract

Any vital activities of the cell are based on the ribosomes, which not only provide the basic machinery for the synthesis of all proteins necessary for cell functioning during growth and division, but for biogenesis itself. From this point of view, ribosomes are self-replicating and autocatalytic structures. In current work we present an elementary model in which the autocatalytic synthesis of ribosomal RNA and proteins, as well as enzymes ensuring their degradation are described with two monotonically increasing functions. For certain parameter values, the model, consisting of one differential equation with delayed argument, demonstrates both stationary and oscillatory dynamics of the ribosomal protein synthesis, which can be chaotic and hyperchaotic dependent on the value of the delayed argument. The biological interpretation of the modeling results and parameter estimation suggest the feasibility of chaotic dynamics in molecular genetic systems of eukaryotes, which depends only on the internal characteristics of functioning of the translation system.