Unbounded solutions of models for glycolysis

The Selkov oscillator, a simple description of glycolysis, is a system of two ordinary differential equations with mass action kinetics. In previous work the authors established several properties of the solutions of this system. In the present paper we extend this to prove that this system has solutions which diverge to infinity in an oscillatory manner at late times. This is done with the help of a Poincaré compactification of the system and a shooting argument. This system was originally derived from another system with Michaelis–Menten kinetics. A Poincaré compactification of the latter system is carried out and this is used to show that the Michaelis–Menten system, like that with mass action, has solutions which diverge to infinity in a monotone manner. It is also shown to admit subcritical Hopf bifurcations and thus unstable periodic solutions. We discuss to what extent the unbounded solutions cast doubt on the biological relevance of the Selkov oscillator and compare it with other models for the same biological system in the literature.