Filippov solutions in the analysis of piecewise linear models describing gene regulatory networks

We study some properties of piecewise linear differential systems describing gene regulatory networks, where the dynamics are governed by sigmoid-type nonlinearities which are close to or coincide with the step functions. To overcome the difficulty of describing the dynamics of the system near singular stationary points (belonging to the discontinuity set of the system) we use the concept of Filippov solutions. It consists in replacing discontinuous differential equations with differential inclusions. The global existence and some other basic properties of the Filippov solutions such as continuous dependence on parameters are studied. We also study the uniqueness and non-uniqueness of the Filippov solutions in singular domains. The concept of Filippov stationary point is extensively exploited in the paper. We compare two ways of defining the singular stationary points: one is based on the Filippov theory and the other consists in replacing step functions with steep sigmoids and investigating the smooth systems thus obtained. The results are illustrated by a number of examples.