Landauer in the age of synthetic biology: energy consumption and information processing in biochemical networks

DOI10.1007/S10955-015-1431-6zbMATH Open1337.92064arXiv1505.02474OpenAlexW1771886792MaRDI QIDQ290466FDOQ290466

Alex H. Lang, David Schwab, Pankaj Mehta

Publication date: 1 June 2016

Published in: Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: A central goal of synthetic biology is to design sophisticated synthetic cellular circuits that can perform complex computations and information processing tasks in response to specific inputs. The tremendous advances in our ability to understand and manipulate cellular information processing networks raises several fundamental physics questions: How do the molecular components of cellular circuits exploit energy consumption to improve information processing? Can one utilize ideas from thermodynamics to improve the design of synthetic cellular circuits and modules? Here, we summarize recent theoretical work addressing these questions. Energy consumption in cellular circuits serves five basic purposes: (1) increasing specificity, (2) manipulating dynamics, (3) reducing variability, (4) amplifying signal, and (5) erasing memory. We demonstrate these ideas using several simple examples and discuss the implications of these theoretical ideas for the emerging field of synthetic biology. We conclude by discussing how it may be possible to overcome these limitations using "post-translational" synthetic biology that exploits reversible protein modification.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02474

zbMATH Keywords

energysystems biologythermodynamicsbiochemical networksbiological physicsnonequilibrium physicssynthetic biology

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Biochemistry, molecular biology (92C40) Systems biology, networks (92C42) Cell biology (92C37)

Cites Work

• Notes on Landauer's principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell's demon
• Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process
• The physical nature of information
• Bounded rationality and well posedness of \(supinf\) problems
• Thermodynamic limits to information harvesting by sensory systems
• Efficiency of cellular information processing
• Nonequilibrium sensing and its analogy to kinetic proofreading

Cited In (6)

• On non-ideal chemical-reaction networks and phase separation
• Implementing Non-Equilibrium Networks with Active Circuits of Duplex Catalysts.
• The stochastic thermodynamics of computation
• The importance of thermodynamics for molecular systems, and the importance of molecular systems for thermodynamics
• Optimizing enzymatic catalysts for rapid turnover of substrates with low enzyme sequestration
• Title not available (Why is that?)

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