Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Constant-complexity stochastic simulation algorithm with optimal binning

Journal Article · · Journal of Chemical Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4928635· OSTI ID:22493533

At the molecular level, biochemical processes are governed by random interactions between reactant molecules, and the dynamics of such systems are inherently stochastic. When the copy numbers of reactants are large, a deterministic description is adequate, but when they are small, such systems are often modeled as continuous-time Markov jump processes that can be described by the chemical master equation. Gillespie’s Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) generates exact trajectories of these systems, but the amount of computational work required for each step of the original SSA is proportional to the number of reaction channels, leading to computational complexity that scales linearly with the problem size. The original SSA is therefore inefficient for large problems, which has prompted the development of several alternative formulations with improved scaling properties. We describe an exact SSA that uses a table data structure with event time binning to achieve constant computational complexity with respect to the number of reaction channels for weakly coupled reaction networks. We present a novel adaptive binning strategy and discuss optimal algorithm parameters. We compare the computational efficiency of the algorithm to existing methods and demonstrate excellent scaling for large problems. This method is well suited for generating exact trajectories of large weakly coupled models, including those that can be described by the reaction-diffusion master equation that arises from spatially discretized reaction-diffusion processes.

OSTI ID:
22493533
Journal Information:
Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Chemical Physics Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 143; ISSN JCPSA6; ISSN 0021-9606
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Hybrid framework for the simulation of stochastic chemical kinetics
Journal Article · Wed Nov 30 23:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:22622216

Final Technical Report "Multiscale Simulation Algorithms for Biochemical Systems"
Technical Report · Thu Oct 25 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · OSTI ID:1148588

An adaptive algorithm for simulation of stochastic reaction-diffusion processes
Journal Article · Tue Jan 19 23:00:00 EST 2010 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:21333922