ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2010
Ecosystem biogeochemistry considered as a distributed metabolic network ordered by maximum entropy production.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Enzyme Catalytic Parameters and Evolution Across the Dissipation Plane.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Towards Pragmatist Thermodynamics: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Entropy and Sustainability.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Redox determines greenhouse gas production kinetics and metabolic traits in water-saturated thawing permafrost peat.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Functional convergence in slow-growing microbial communities arises from thermodynamic constraints.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Self-Organization of Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions Studied by the Maximum Entropy Production Principle.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Redox-informed models of global biogeochemical cycles.Nature communications · 2020Review
- Phytoplankton Temporal Strategies Increase Entropy Production in a Marine Food Web Model.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Thermodynamics in Ecology-An Introductory Review.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Information Theory in Computational Biology: Where We Stand Today.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Different Dimensions in Microbial Community Adaptation and Function.Indian journal of microbiology · 2019Article
- How and why kinetics, thermodynamics, and chemistry induce the logic of biological evolution.Beilstein journal of organic chemistry · 2017Article
- Viral information.Biology & philosophy · 2013Article
- Towards an Evolutionary Model of Animal-Associated Microbiomes.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2011Article
- It is not the entropy you produce, rather, how you produce it.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Maximum entropy production in environmental and ecological systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
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Abstract
We examine the application of the maximum entropy production principle for describing ecosystem biogeochemistry. Since ecosystems can be functionally stable despite changes in species composition, we use a distributed metabolic network for describing biogeochemistry, which synthesizes generic biological structures that catalyse reaction pathways, but is otherwise organism independent. Allocation of biological structure and regulation of biogeochemical reactions is determined via solution of an optimal control problem in which entropy production is maximized. However, because synthesis of biological structures cannot occur if entropy production is maximized instantaneously, we propose that information stored within the metagenome allows biological systems to maximize entropy production when averaged over time. This differs from abiotic systems that maximize entropy production at a point in space-time, which we refer to as the steepest descent pathway. It is the spatio-temporal averaging that allows biological systems to outperform abiotic processes in entropy production, at least in many situations. A simulation of a methanotrophic system is used to demonstrate the approach. We conclude with a brief discussion on the implications of viewing ecosystems as self-organizing molecular machines that function to maximize entropy production at the ecosystem level of organization.
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