  Autocatalytic chemical networks play a predominant role in a large number of
natural systems such as in metabolic pathways and in ecological networks.
Despite recent efforts, the precise impact of thermodynamic constraints on
these networks remains elusive. In this work, we present a theoretical
framework that allows determining bounds on the thermodynamic affinity and on
the concentrations of autocatalysts in mass-action autocatalytic networks.
These bounds can be obtained solely from the stoichiometry of the underlying
chemical reaction network, and are independent from the numerical values of
kinetic parameters. This property holds in the specific regime where all the
fluxes of the network are tightly coupled and maximal. Our method is applicable
to large networks, and can be used to complement constraints-based modeling
methods of metabolic networks, which typically do not provide predictions about
thermodynamic properties or concentration ranges of metabolites
