Brusselator: an abstract chemical reaction?

The Bruselator and the Selkov model which describes an irreversible glycolysis reaction in the self-sustained regime are discussed. It is shown that these two differently structured models can be reduced to a single equation, the generalized Rayleigh equation. The physical basis of this reduction is examined. The advantages of the obtained equation as a quantitative and qualitative analysis tool are discussed, as are the similarities and differences of the solutions from the two models for nearly harmonic and relaxation self-oscillations.