Categories and functors which characterize chemical reactions, their kinetics and mechanism (Q1116922)

A chemical reaction system is represented by an abelian category with the aim to describe chemical reactions, their kinetics and mechanisms at different levels of abstraction and in ways, which may be different or even revers to the traditional procedure in chemistry, where one usually starts with the chemical species and then studies certain reactions. In particular, chemical reactions are represented by chain complexes which constitute the different orders of abstraction in the kinetics or the mechanisms. An example of an application of the proposed theory is given and a theorem concerning the number of possible mechanisms in a given reaction system is proved.