Stability of stationary solutions of piecewise affine differential equations describing gene regulatory networks

We study stability properties of a class of piecewise affine systems of ordinary differential equations arising in the modeling of gene regulatory networks. Our method goes back to the concept of a Filippov stationary solution (in the narrow sense) to a differential inclusion corresponding to the system in question. The main result of the paper justifies a reduction principle in the stability analysis enabling to omit the variables that are not singular, i.e. that stay away from the discontinuity set of the system. We suggest also “the first approximation method” to study asymptotic stability of stationary solutions based on calculating the principal part of the system, which is 0-homogeneous rather than linear. This leads to an efficient algorithm of how to check asymptotic stability without calculating the eigenvalues of the systemʼs Jacobian. In Appendix A we discuss and compare two other concepts of stationary solutions to the system in question.