The effect of diffusion on the Hopf-bifurcation in a model glycolytic reaction exhibiting oscillations

The symmetry-breaking instability in the reversible Selkov model, a generic model of glycolytic oscillations, is reported. The time periodic oscillations of the homogeneous model can undergo a symmetry-breaking instability through Hopf-bifurcation by coupling with molecular diffusion in a distributed system and generate sinusoidal heterogeneous waves of small wavelengths.