Thermodynamics of Life: Cells, Organisms and Evolution
A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Thermodynamics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 February 2021) | Viewed by 14637
Special Issue Editors
Interests: the Second Law and primary photosynthesis; thermal and electronic energy transfer; dynamics of electronic energy transfer in plant photosystems; energy disorder in plant photosystems, thermodynamics of structural complexity in biological cells
Interests: excitation energy transfer in photosynthetic array; Chorophyll electronic transition modulation; Thermodynamics of photosynthesis
Special Issue Information
The question of the nature and origins of life has always occupied the minds of both philosophers and scientists. The development of materialism in Western society about 500 years ago prompted specific and directed studies by biologists, and subsequently by physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers, on this, perhaps the most important and intriguing of questions.
In this Special Issue, we concentrate on the attempts by physicists to understand the animate in terms of the known principles of thermodynamics. Many have suggested, and continue to suggest, that the ever-increasing complexity and thermodynamic “order” creation, in apparent violation of the Second Law, may place life outside the bounds of physics as we know it.
It is the purpose of the present Special Issue to oppose this view and to present the many and varied approaches that physics uses to come to terms with this fundamental question. The Special Issue will cover aspects of this problem at the various levels of biological organization: cellular, whole organisms, and evolution itself.
The overriding question of the bio-genesis and evolution of biological structure, i.e., thermodynamic “order”, in the living state will be addressed by such varied approaches as equilibrium thermodynamics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the maximum power principle of Lotka and Darwinian natural selection, thermodynamics of multiple gene networks considering network dimensions, entropy production leading to the genesis of information systems, and experiments involving a comparison of energy and entropy differences between a mixture of complex biomolecules and living matter. The specific problem of how thermodynamics relates to primary electron transport in plant photosystems will also be addressed. Furthermore, the generally accepted notion that it is the Gibbs-free energy which drives (bio)chemical reactions and produces (bio)chemical work shall be questioned, and the possible role of environmental heat will be considered.
Prof. Robert C. Jennings
Dr. Giuseppe Zucchelli
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- thermodynamics of life
- evolution and genesis of biological structural complexity
- entropy
- thermodynamic information
- Gibbs-free energy
- equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics
- maximum power principle
