Entropic constraints on the steady-state fitness of competing self-replicators

摘要

Recent developments in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics suggest that the history of entropy production in a system determines the relative likelihood of competing processes. This presents the possibility of interpreting and predicting the self-organization of complex active systems, but existing theories rely on quantities that are challenging to obtain. Here, we address this issue for a general class of Markovian systems in which two types of self-replicating molecular assemblies (self-replicators) compete for a pool of limiting resource molecules within a nonequilibrium steady state. We derive exact relations that show that the relative fitness of these species depends on a path function psi, which is a sum of the entropy production and a relative-entropy term. In the limit of infinite path length, psi reduces to the entropy production. We demonstrate use of the theory by numerically studying two models inspired by biological systems, including a simplified model of a competition between strains of the yeast prion Sup35 in the presence of driven disaggregation by the ATPase Hsp104. Published by AIP Publishing.