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Modern biological tools have made it possible to unequivocally demonstrate the deep relationship among species in terms of genes and basic molecular mechanisms. In addition, results from genetic, physical and physiological approaches…
We present some novel thermodynamic ideas based on the Maupertuis principle. By considering Hamiltonians written in terms of appropriate action-angle variables we show that thermal states can be characterized by the action variables and by…
The quest for nonequilibrium quantum phase transitions is often hampered by the tendency of driving and dissipation to give rise to an effective temperature, resulting in classical behavior. Could this be different when the dissipation is…
Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…
The thermodynamic dissipation theory for the origin of life asserts a thermodynamic imperative for the origin of life, suggesting that the fundamental molecules of life originated as self-organized molecular photon dissipative structures…
The most important thermodynamic work performed by life today is the dissipation of the solar photon flux into heat through organic pigments in water. From this thermodynamic perspective, biological evolution is thus just the dispersal of…
The goal of this paper is the identification of the physical processes at the origin of the nonlinear behavior of a plasma conductor when an external constraint gradually departs the system from thermal equilibrium. This reveals the…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
We show how entangled steady states can be prepared by purely dissipative dynamics in a system coupled to a thermal environment. While entanglement is hindered by thermalization when the system and environment exchange a conserved quantity,…
Kinetic proofreading mechanisms explain the extraordinary accuracy observed in central biological events in terms of the enhanced specificity of substrate selection networks under a nonequilibrium environment. The nonequilibrium steady…
The metabolic network of a living cell involves several hundreds or thousands of interconnected biochemical reactions. Previous research has shown that under realistic conditions only a fraction of these reactions is concurrently active in…
Optimality principles in nonequilibrium transport networks are linked to a thermodynamic formalism based on generalized transport potentials endowed with Legendre duality and related contact structure. This allows quantifying the distance…
In order to respond to environmental signals, cells often use small molecular circuits to transmit information about their surroundings. Recently, motivated by concrete examples in signaling and gene regulation, a body of work has focused…
The possibility that evolutionary forces -- together with a few fundamental factors such as thermodynamic constraints, specific computational features enabling information processing, and ecological processes -- might constrain the logic of…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
The emergence of longer information-carrying and functional nucleotide polymers from random short strands was a major stepping stone at the dawn of life. But the formation of those polymers under temperature oscillation required some form…
The energy dissipation rate in a nonequilibirum reaction system can be determined by the reaction rates in the underlying reaction network. By developing a coarse-graining process in state space and a corresponding renormalization procedure…
We study the dynamics of the quantum phase distribution associated with the reduced density matrix of a system for a number of situations of practical importance, as the system evolves under the influence of its environment, interacting via…
We derive a formulation of the First Law of nonequilibrium thermodynamics for biological information-processing systems by partitioning entropy in the Second Law into microscopic and mesoscopic components and by assuming that natural…
Diverse equilibrium systems with heterogeneous interactions lie at the edge of stability. Such marginally stable states are dynamically selected as the most abundant ones or as those with the largest basins of attraction. On the other hand,…