The effect of conservation on the dynamics of chemical reaction networks

Component mass conservation gives a linear first integral to the dynamic reaction kinetic equations and greatly influences the set of admissible reactions. Therefore, mass conservation can be related to the deficiency of the reaction network and thus to its dynamic properties. In particular, it is shown that a mass conserving CRN without isomers and with a full rank complex composition matrix has zero deficiency. The concepts and results are illustrated on the example of the original and the lumped version of Michaelis-Menten kinetics.