Complex Chemical Reaction Mechanisms

John Ross, Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Stanford University

We review briefly several methods for determining, not guessing, reaction mechanisms, that is the sequence of elementary reactions that lead from reactants via intermediates to products: response methods, correlation metric construction, and applications of genetic algorithms. We then turn to problems of 'in vivo' kinetics: stochastic effects due to small numbers of molecules, due to intermolecular dynamics, and the interplay of these two resulting in delays and non-Markovian stochastics. All these, and crowding, bring deviations from mass-action kintics and lead to fractal kinetics.

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