Abstract
Biomolecular feedback systems are now a central application area of interest within control theory. While classical control techniques provide valuable insight into the function and design of both natural and synthetic biomolecular systems, there are certain aspects of biological control that have proven difficult to analyze with traditional methods. To this end, we describe here how the recently developed tools of dominance analysis can be used to gain insight into the nonlinear behavior of the antithetic integral feedback circuit, a recently discovered control architecture which implements integral control of arbitrary biomolecular processes using a simple feedback mechanism. We show that dominance theory can predict both monostability and periodic oscillations in the circuit, depending on the corresponding parameters and architecture. We then use the theory to characterize the robustness of the asymptotic behavior of this circuit in a nonlinear setting.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
✶ This work is supported in part by DARPA Grant No. HR0011-16-2-0049.
Updated after reviews for IFAC 2020