PERIODIC AND CHAOTIC BEHAVIOR OF SUBSTRATE-INHIBITED ENZYMATIC-REACTIONS WITH HYDROGEN-IONS PRODUCTION

A two-compartment model of an enzyme system with substrate inhibition kinetics and hydrogen ion production is investigated. The model is use d to study the bifurcation, instability, and chaotic behavior of the s ystem. The investigation, although in a restricted region of the param eters' space, has uncovered a good part of the rich dynamic characteri stics of this system, including: period doubling sequences leading to chaos, banded chaos, fully developed chaos, interior crisis, tangent b ifurcation leading to intermittency, periodic windows interrupting cha otic regions, and alternating periodic chaotic sequences. The results relate to the phenomena occurring in physiological experiments, such a s the periodic stimulation of neural cells and the voltage-gated ion c hannel dynamics.