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Cited by 449Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical MechanicsOrigins and Evolution of LifeCellular Automata and Applications

Statistical physics of self-replication

Open access
England, Jeremy L.·2013·The Journal of Chemical Physics
DOI 10.1063/1.4818538
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Abstract

Self-replication is a capacity common to every species of living thing, and simple physical intuition dictates that such a process must invariably be fueled by the production of entropy. Here, we undertake to make this intuition rigorous and quantitative by deriving a lower bound for the amount of heat that is produced during a process of self-replication in a system coupled to a thermal bath. We find that the minimum value for the physically allowed rate of heat production is determined by the growth rate, internal entropy, and durability of the replicator, and we discuss the implications of this finding for bacterial cell division, as well as for the pre-biotic emergence of self-replicating nucleic acids.

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Crossref · 10.1063/1.4818538

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  • The FEP can be counted among contemporary attempts to understand complex systems through variational principles.

    “For this reason, the FEP can be counted among contemporary attempts to understand complex systems through variational principles—see e.g., [1,2,3,4] for a short review.”

    From The Free Energy Principle: Good Science and Questionable Philosophy in a Grand Unifying Theory (2021) · cites this paper as [1]

    The Introduction describes a contemporary attempt to derive general thermodynamic constraints for complex biological self-replication. The Macroscopic Irreversibility section derives a bound on entropy production, but our copy does not identify this approach as a variational principle or discuss the FEP; those parts of the attribution are unsupported. The retrieved passages have section labels but no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.78)

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 27

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Authors
England, J. L.
Affiliations
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Corresponding author
England, Jeremy L.
ORCID
England, Jeremy L.
Venue
The Journal of Chemical Physics
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Published
2013-08-21
Volume
139
Issue
12
Pages
121923-121923
ISSN
  • 0021-9606 (ISSN-L)
  • 1089-7690
DOI
10.1063/1.4818538
OpenAlex
W2125605221
Cited by
449
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 62 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 48 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 47 · 2016: 33 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 4
FWCI
16.37
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Cellular Automata and Applications
Keywords
self-replication, thermogenesis, entropy production, lower bounds, thermal baths, growth rate, bacterial cell division
MeSH terms
Bacteria, Cell Division, Cell Physiological Phenomena, Nucleic Acids, Statistics as Topic, Thermodynamics

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