Figure 3.
Plots of relative deviation in concentration versus time for species of the mechanism in Fig. 2. In a, a perturbation of the concentration of species X1 causes a pulse to propagate through the sequence X2; X3; X4; X5; in b, perturbation of species X8 causes the pulse to propagate through the sequence X7; X6; X3; X4; X5. With the exception of the branch species X3, the maximum value (of the relative deviation) of a species occurs on the curve for the species that produces it. For the branch species, the maximum value of u3 is equal to αi ui, where i is 2 or 6, depending on whether the pulse originates from species X2 or X6. The coefficients α2 and α6 are the relative contributions of the branch fluxes to the total flux: α2 = j1/(j1 + j2) and α6 = 1 − α2.