Systems biology uses large networks of biochemical reactions to model the
functioning of biological cells from the molecular to the cellular scale. The
dynamics of dissipative reaction networks with many well separated time scales
can be described as a sequence of successive equilibrations of different
subsets of variables of the system. Polynomial systems with separation are
equilibrated when at least two monomials, of opposite signs, have the same
order of magnitude and dominate the others. These equilibrations and the
corresponding truncated dynamics, obtained by eliminating the dominated terms,
find a natural formulation in tropical analysis and can be used for model
reduction.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, workshop Tropical-12, Moskow, August 26-31, 2012;
in press Contemporary Mathematic
