Stochastic modelling of biochemical systems of multi-step reactions using a simplified two-variable model

Background A fundamental issue in systems biology is how to design simplified mathematical models for describing the dynamics of complex biochemical reaction systems. Among them, a key question is how to use simplified reactions to describe the chemical events of multi-step reactions that are ubiquitous in biochemistry and biophysics. To address this issue, a widely used approach in literature is to use one-step reaction to represent the multi-step chemical events. In recent years, a number of modelling methods have been designed to improve the accuracy of the one-step reaction method, including the use of reactions with time delay. However, our recent research results suggested that there are still deviations between the dynamics of delayed reactions and that of the multi-step reactions. Therefore, more sophisticated modelling methods are needed to accurately describe the complex biological systems in an efficient way.