  For dynamical systems arising from chemical reaction networks, persistence is
the property that each species concentration remains positively bounded away
from zero, as long as species concentrations were all positive in the
beginning. We describe two graphical procedures for simplifying reaction
networks without breaking known necessary or sufficient conditions for
persistence, by iteratively removing so-called intermediates and catalysts from
the network. The procedures are easy to apply and, in many cases, lead to
highly simplified network structures, such as monomolecular networks. For
specific classes of reaction networks, we show that these conditions for
persistence are equivalent to one another. Furthermore, they can also be
characterized by easily checkable strong connectivity properties of a related
graph. In particular, this is the case for (conservative) monomolecular
networks, as well as cascades of a large class of post-translational
modification systems (of which the MAPK cascade and the $n$-site futile cycle
are prominent examples). Since one of the aforementioned sufficient conditions
for persistence precludes the existence of boundary steady states, our method
also provides a graphical tool to check for that.
