The (metabolic) 'cost of life': New method quantifies hidden energy costs of maintaining metabolic pathways
Phys.org••science
Key Points:
- A new study published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics proposes a thermodynamic method to calculate the energetic costs of maintaining specific biochemical processes and preventing alternative reactions, addressing a gap left by classical mechanics.
- The research highlights that life’s origin involved an energy investment to maintain compartmentalization and selectively steer chemical reactions into preferred metabolic pathways, which classical physics treats as cost-free constraints.
- The method quantifies two key costs: the maintenance cost (sustaining a constant flow through a pathway) and the restriction cost (blocking alternative reactions), enabling ranking of metabolic pathways by their thermodynamic expense.
- Applying this framework, researchers found that natural metabolic cycles, like the Calvin cycle in photosynthesis, are among the least energetically costly, supporting evolutionary efficiency in
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