Abstract
Some problems of describing biological systems with the use of entropy as a measure of the complexity of these systems are considered. Entropy is studied both for the organism as a whole and for its parts down to the molecular level. Correlation of actions of various parts of the whole organism, intercellular interactions and control, as well as cooperativity on the microlevel lead to a more complex structure and lower statistical entropy. For a multicellular organism, entropy is much lower than entropy for the same mass of a colony of unicellular organisms. Cooperativity always reduces the entropy of the system; a simple example of ligand binding to a macromolecule carrying two reaction centers shows how entropy is consistent with the ambiguity of the result in the Bernoulli test scheme. Particular attention is paid to the qualitative and quantitative relationship between the entropy of the system and the cooperativity of ligand binding to macromolecules. A kinetic model of metabolism. corresponding to Schrödinger’s concept of the maintenance biosystems by “negentropy feeding”, is proposed. This model allows calculating the nonequilibrium local entropy and comparing it with the local equilibrium entropy inherent in non-living matter.
Highlights
To consider the biological system as a whole, we develop a kinetic approach, see refs. [10,11], which describes this structure as a nonequilibrium open system
In this paper we have considered the possibilities of the concept of entropy as applied to a biological system at different levels
We have tried to discuss the influence on entropy of correlations between the actions of different parts of the whole organism, intercellular interactions and control, as well as cooperativity on the microscopic level
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. At the heart of all biological phenomena we find the physics of open systems far from equilibrium” This fuzzy assumption (to return to Bauer’s words) can be related to the kinetic model of the “flowing nonequilibrium” because states far from equilibrium are maintained by two factors: the flow (blood, water, etc.), which transfers the nonequilibrium distribution from input to output, and the reactions of different interactions in this open system. [17] attempted to describe systematically the rate of entropy production associated with irreversible processes They apply the model to the most interesting and relevant case of metabolic network, the glucose catabolism in normal and cancer cells. A simple kinetic model of metabolism allows us to study a biological organism as an open nonequilibrium system maintained by feeding the negentropy (H-function in terms of Boltzmann theory). The statistical entropy is a main part of kinetic description which can connect different levels
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