Noise-induced metastability in biochemical networks
  Intra-cellular biochemical reactions exhibit a rich dynamical phenomenology which cannot be explained within the framework of mean-field rate equations and additive noise. Here, we show that the presence of metastable states and radically different timescales are general features of a broad class of autocatalyic reaction networks, and moreover, that this fact may be exploited to gain analytical results. The latter point is demonstrated by a treatment of the paradigmatic Togashi-Kaneko reaction, which has resisted theoretical analysis for the last decade. 
Tommaso Biancalani, Tim Rogers and Alan J. McKane
cond-mat.stat-mech physics.bio-ph q-bio.MN