A prototype kinetic model of bacterial glycolysis is formulated and a minimal set of assumptions is postulated that allows the formulation of an approx. math. model. To establish a baseline for future investigations of more complicated situations, it is assumed that enzyme activities depend only on the concns. of their substrates and that the cells are not growing. Under these circumstances, steady states of the glycolytic system are described by 3 coupled non-linear equations. The values of the kinetic parameters which give rise to steady-state multiplicities are examd. and conditions for multiplicity are derived. The anal. indicates that ?10 steady states can exist for some parameter values. [on SciFinder (R)]