Related papers: Metabolic scaling in small life forms

Living systems continuously transform matter and energy through the chemical processes that constitute their metabolism. The overall metabolic rate of an organism correlates positively with its body mass, however both the exact scaling…

This paper investigates the role of size in biological organisms. More specifically, how the energy demand, expressed by the metabolic rate, changes according to the mass of an organism. Empirical evidence suggests a power-law relation…

The prevailing theory for metabolic scaling is based on area-preserved, space-filling fractal vascular networks. However, it's known both theoretically and experimentally that animals' vascular systems obey Murray's cubic branching law.…

Allometric scaling is one of the most pervasive laws in biology. Its origin, however, is still a matter of dispute. Recent studies have established that maximum metabolic rate scales with an exponent larger than that found for basal…

The origin of allometric scaling of metabolic rate is a long-standing question in biology. Several models have been proposed for explaining the origin; however, they have advantages and disadvantages. In particular, previous models only…

One of the major characteristics of living organisms is metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy produced per unit of time. When the mass of organisms increases, the metabolic rate also increases (usually as a power function of mass),…

Researchers have found that the metabolisms of organisms appear to scale proportionally to a 3/4 power of their mass. Mathematics in this article suggests that the capacity of an isotropically radiating energy supply scales up by a 4/3…

One of the most fundamental rules in metabolic ecology is the allometric equation, which is a power-law scaling that describes the connection between body measurements and body size. The biological dynamics of this essentially empirical…

Production of energy is a foundation of life. Metabolic rate of organisms (amount of energy produced per unit time) generally increases slower than organisms' mass, which has important implications for life organization. This phenomenon,…

During overflow metabolism, cells excrete glycolytic byproducts when growing under aerobic conditions in a seemingly wasteful fashion. While potentially advantageous for microbes with finite oxidative capacity, its role in higher organisms…

Accurately determining and classifying the structure of complex networks is the focus of much current research. One class of network of particular interest are metabolic pathways, which have previously been studied from a graph theoretical…

We examine the scaling law $B \propto M^{\alpha}$ which connects organismal metabolic rate $B$ with organismal mass $M$, where $\alpha$ is commonly held to be 3/4. Since simple dimensional analysis suggests $\alpha=2/3$, we consider this to…

Metabolism of living organisms is a foundation of life. The metabolic rate (energy production per unit time) increases slower than organisms' mass. When this phenomenon is considered across different species, it is called interspecific…

The origin and shape of metabolic scaling has been controversial since Kleiber found that basal metabolic rate of animals seemed to vary as a power law of their body mass with exponent 3/4, instead of 2/3, as a surface-to-volume argument…

A general simple theory for the interspecific allometric scaling is developed in the $d+1$-dimensional space ($d$ biological lengths and a physiological time) of metabolic states of organisms. It is assumed that natural selection shaped the…

In prokaryotic genomes the number of transcriptional regulators is known to quadratically scale with the total number of protein-coding genes. Toolbox model was recently proposed to explain this scaling for metabolic enzymes and their…

We extend a previously theory for the interspecific allometric scaling developed in a $d+1$-dimensional space of metabolic states. The time, which is characteristic of all biological processes, is included as an extra dimension to $d$…

Natural selection has produced an extraordinary diversity of life histories spanning many orders of magnitude in body size, vital rates, and biological times. In general, big and cold organisms grow and reproduce slowly and live long lives;…

Recently, West et al. claimed to derive a general quantitative model based on fundamental principles for the allocation of metabolic energy between maintenance of existing tissue and the production of new biomass, and in addition claimed to…

The origin of allometric scaling patterns that are multiples of 1/4 has long fascinated biologists. While not universal, scaling relationships with exponents that are close to multiples of 1/4 are common and have been described in all major…