When a compound, which is unobservable by analytical means, decays/decomposes, one can still determine its decomposition rate by measuring an equilibrium involving this compound. Exemplarily, a two-substrate two-product equilibrium, in this case nucleoside phosphorolysis (nucleoside + phosphate = nucleobase + pentose-1-phosphate) can be used to determine the decomposition rate of one of the products (pentose-1-phosphate).
On the theoretical side, this idea is about generalizing the kinetic vs equilibrium effect, and demonstrating on which scales of equilibrium constants this process works.
On the applied / wet-lab side, a result using this idea is already published (for ribose-1-phosphate) in https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.202000901
A dataset to write a publication about (for 2'-deoxyribose-1-phosphate) is at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3572070
You are interested in this topic? But the idea is gibberish and incomplete, or non-sense? Well, you're probably right!
All of this is work in progress -- I would be very happy if you get in touch so we can improve this!
You are free to use this idea in whatever way you like. I put this material under CC-BY license, just to make it legally clear, but: "Gedanken sind frei" (ideas are free) -- I don't expect them to be protectable anyway.
This "Farm of Ideas" is supposed to store ideas I would like to develop into scientific progress some day, and to store their progression from initial idea being had, over keeping them alive, to growing them into something real and then "harvesting".
If you are faster in developing them, I am happy with you and for the world! :) Just to avoid me having spend time on something you already realized then, I would be grateful for a short letting-me-know email.