Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for biomolecular processes

Abstract

Biomolecular systems like molecular motors or pumps, transcription and translation machinery, and other enzymatic reactions can be described as Markov processes on a suitable network. We show quite generally that in a steady state the dispersion of observables like the number of consumed/produced molecules or the number of steps of a motor is constrained by the thermodynamic cost of generating it. An uncertainty $\epsilon$ requires at least a cost of $2k_{B}T/{\epsilon }^2$ independent of the time required to generate the output.

5+6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Efficiency of cellular information processing
• Thermodynamics of statistical inference by cells
• Information-theoretic vs. thermodynamic entropy production in autonomous sensory networks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Universal Bound on the Fano Factor in Enzyme Kinetics