Han Peters

Metabolic states with maximal specific rate carry flux through an elementary flux mode

Specific product formation rates and cellular growth rates are important maximization targets in biotechnology and microbial evolution. Maximization of a specific rate (i.e. a rate expressed per unit biomass amount) requires the expression of particular metabolic pathways at optimal enzyme concentrations. In contrast to the prediction of maximal product yields, any prediction of optimal specific rates at the genome scale is currently computationally intractable, even if the kinetic properties of all enzymes are available. In the present study, we characterize maximal‐specific‐rate states of metabolic networks of arbitrary size and complexity, including genome‐scale kinetic models. We report that optimal states are elementary flux modes, which are minimal metabolic networks operating at a thermodynamically‐feasible steady state with one independent flux. Remarkably, elementary flux modes rely only on reaction stoichiometry, yet they function as the optimal states of mathematical models incorporating enzyme kinetics. Our results pave the way for the optimization of genome‐scale kinetic models because they offer huge simplifications to overcome the concomitant computational problems.

Fatou Components of Attracting Skew-Products

We investigate the existence of wandering Fatou components for polynomial skew-products in two complex variables. In 2004, the non-existence of wandering domains near a super-attracting invariant fiber was shown in Lilov (Fatou theory in two dimensions, PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 2004). In 2014, it was shown in Astorg et al. (Ann Math, arXiv:1411.1188 [math.DS], 2014) that wandering domains can exist near a parabolic invariant fiber. In Peters and Vivas (Math Z, arXiv:1408.0498, 2014), the geometrically attracting case was studied, and we continue this study here. We prove the non-existence of wandering domains for subhyperbolic attracting skew-products; this class contains the maps studied in Peters and Vivas (Math Z, arXiv:1408.0498, 2014). Using expansion properties on the Julia set in the invariant fiber, we prove bounds on the rate of escape of critical orbits in almost all fibers. Our main tool in describing these critical orbits is a possibly singular linearization map of unstable manifolds.

ATTRACTING BASINS OF VOLUME PRESERVING AUTOMORPHISMS OF ℂk

We study topological properties of attracting sets for automorphisms of ℂk. Our main result is that a generic volume preserving automorphism has a hyperbolic fixed point with a dense stable manifold. On the other hand, we show that an attracting set can only contain a neighborhood of the fixed point if it is an attracting fixed point. We will see that the latter does not hold in the non-autonomous setting.

Dynamics of transcendental Hénon maps

The dynamics of transcendental functions in the complex plane has received a significant amount of attention. In particular much is known about the description of Fatou components. Besides the types of periodic Fatou components that can occur for polynomials, there also exist so-called Baker domains, periodic components where all orbits converge to infinity, as well as wandering domains. In trying to find analogues of these one dimensional results, it is not clear which higher dimensional transcendental maps to consider. In this paper we find inspiration from the extensive work on the dynamics of complex Hénon maps. We introduce the family of transcendental Hénon maps, and study their dynamics, emphasizing the description of Fatou components. We prove that the classification of the recurrent invariant Fatou components is similar to that of polynomial Hénon maps, and we give examples of Baker domains and wandering domains.