ArticleMetabolic engineering2011
Metabolic networks evolve towards states of maximum entropy production.
Article in Metabolic engineering, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Natural Selection as a Process That Increases Metabolic Entropy Production? A Regime-Dependent Analysis in Open Chemostat Systems with Michaelis-Menten Kinetics and Mutation-Selection Dynamics.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Enzyme Catalytic Parameters and Evolution Across the Dissipation Plane.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- A Trade-off between Force and Flow May Lead to Reduced Entropy Production Rate during Faster Microbial Growth.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Article
- Predicting the Rate Structure of an Evolved Metabolic Network.Metabolites · 2025Article
- Metabolic activity controls the emergence of coherent flows in microbial suspensions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Free-energy transduction mechanisms shape the flux space of metabolic networks.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Self-Organization of Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions Studied by the Maximum Entropy Production Principle.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Optimizing Our Patients' Entropy Production as Therapy? Hypotheses Originating from the Physics of Physiology.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Dynamic metabolic resource allocation based on the maximum entropy principle.Journal of mathematical biology · 2020Article
- Maximum Entropy Production Theorem for Transitions between Enzyme Functional States and Its Applications.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Entropic constraints on the steady-state fitness of competing self-replicators.The Journal of chemical physics · 2018Article
- Reaction and diffusion thermodynamics explain optimal temperatures of biochemical reactions.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Prediction of Metabolite Concentrations, Rate Constants and Post-Translational Regulation Using Maximum Entropy-Based Simulations with Application to Central Metabolism ofProcesses (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- Is the catalytic activity of triosephosphate isomerase fully optimized? An investigation based on maximization of entropy production.Journal of biological physics · 2017Article
- A Metagenomic Analysis of Bacterial Microbiota in the Digestive Tract of Triatomines.Bioinformatics and biology insights · 2017Article
- Thermodynamics of random reaction networks.PloS one · 2015Article
- The major transitions of life from a network perspective.Frontiers in physiology · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A metabolic network can be described by a set of elementary modes or pathways representing discrete metabolic states that support cell function. We have recently shown that in the most likely metabolic state the usage probability of individual elementary modes is distributed according to the Boltzmann distribution law while complying with the principle of maximum entropy production. To demonstrate that a metabolic network evolves towards such state we have carried out adaptive evolution experiments with Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum operating with a reduced metabolic functionality based on a reduced set of elementary modes. In such reduced metabolic network metabolic fluxes can be conveniently computed from the measured metabolite secretion pattern. Over a time span of 300 generations the specific growth rate of the strain continuously increased together with a continuous increase in the rate of entropy production. We show that the rate of entropy production asymptotically approaches the maximum entropy production rate predicted from the state when the usage probability of individual elementary modes is distributed according to the Boltzmann distribution. Therefore, the outcome of evolution of a complex biological system can be predicted in highly quantitative terms using basic statistical mechanical principles.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.