Differentiable Programming of Chemical Reaction Networks

Abstract: We present a differentiable formulation of abstract chemical reaction networks (CRNs) that can be trained to solve a variety of computational tasks. Chemical reaction networks are one of the most fundamental computational substrates used by nature. We study well-mixed single-chamber systems, as well as systems with multiple chambers separated by membranes, under mass-action kinetics. We demonstrate that differentiable optimisation, combined with proper regularisation, can discover non-trivial sparse reaction networks that can implement various sorts of oscillators and other chemical computing devices.