title: Network thermodynamics in the post-genomic era.
abstract: Network models have been used to study the underlying processes and principles of biological systems for decades, providing many insights into the complexity of life. Biological systems require a constant flow of free energy to drive these processes that operate away from thermodynamic equilibrium. With the advent of high-throughput omics technologies, more and more thermodynamic knowledge about the biological components, processes and their interactions are surfacing that we can integrate using large-scale biological network models. This allows us to ask many fundamental questions about these networks, such as, how far away from equilibrium must the reactions in a network be displaced in order to allow growth, or what are the possible thermodynamic objectives of the cell.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Systems Biotechnology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Keng Cher
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Soh
authors.forename: Vassily
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hatzimanikatis
mesh_terms: D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D008954:Models, Biological; D049490:Systems Biology; D013816:Thermodynamics