No Arabic abstract
The paper by Malek Mansour and Garcia [Phys. Rev. E 101, 052135 (2020)] is shown to be based on misconceptions in the stochastic formulation of chemical thermodynamics in reactive systems. Their erroneous claims, asserting that entropy production cannot be correctly evaluated using path probabilities whenever the reactive system involves more than one elementary reaction leading to the same composition changes, are refuted.
For many real physico-chemical complex systems detailed mechanism includes both reversible and irreversible reactions. Such systems are typical in homogeneous combustion and heterogeneous catalytic oxidation. Most complex enzyme reactions include irreversible steps. The classical thermodynamics has no limit for irreversible reactions whereas the kinetic equations may have such a limit. We represent the systems with irreversible reactions as the limits of the fully reversible systems when some of the equilibrium concentrations tend to zero. The structure of the limit reaction system crucially depends on the relative rates of this tendency to zero. We study the dynamics of the limit system and describe its limit behavior as $t to infty$. If the reversible systems obey the principle of detailed balance then the limit system with some irreversible reactions must satisfy the {em extended principle of detailed balance}. It is formulated and proven in the form of two conditions: (i) the reversible part satisfies the principle of detailed balance and (ii) the convex hull of the stoichiometric vectors of the irreversible reactions does not intersect the linear span of the stoichiometric vectors of the reversible reactions. These conditions imply the existence of the global Lyapunov functionals and alow an algebraic description of the limit behavior. The thermodynamic theory of the irreversible limit of reversible reactions is illustrated by the analysis of hydrogen combustion.
Structure-forming systems are ubiquitous in nature, ranging from atoms building molecules to self-assembly of colloidal amphibolic particles. The understanding of the underlying thermodynamics of such systems remains an important problem. Here we derive the entropy for structure-forming systems that differs from Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy by a term that explicitly captures clustered states. For large systems and low concentrations, the approach is equivalent to the grand-canonical ensemble; for small systems, we find significant deviations. We derive the detailed fluctuation theorem and Crooks work fluctuation theorem for structure-forming systems. The connection to the theory of particle self-assembly is discussed. We apply the results to several physical systems. We present the phase diagram for patchy particles described by the Kern-Frenkel potential. We show that the Curie-Weiss model with molecule structures exhibits a first-order phase transition.
Biomolecular conformational transitions are usually modeled as barrier crossings in a free energy landscape. The transition paths connect two local free energy minima and transition path times (TPT) are the actual durations of the crossing events. The simplest model employed to analyze TPT and to fit empirical data is that of a stochastic particle crossing a parabolic barrier. Motivated by some disagreement between the value of the barrier height obtained from the TPT distributions as compared to the value obtained from kinetic and thermodynamic analyses, we investigate here TPT for barriers which deviate from the symmetric parabolic shape. We introduce a continuous set of potentials, that starting from a parabolic shape, can be made increasingly asymmetric by tuning a single parameter. The TPT distributions obtained in the asymmetric case are very well-fitted by distributions generated by parabolic barriers. The fits, however, provide values for the barrier heights and diffusion coefficients which deviate from the original input values. We show how these findings can be understood from the analysis of the eigenvalues spectrum of the Fokker-Planck equation and highlight connections with experimental results.
Understanding the thermodynamics of the duplication process is a fundamental step towards a comprehensive physical theory of biological systems. However, the immense complexity of real cells obscures the fundamental tensions between energy gradients and entropic contributions that underlie duplication. The study of synthetic, feasible systems reproducing part of the key ingredients of living entities but overcoming major sources of biological complexity is of great relevance to deepen the comprehension of the fundamental thermodynamic processes underlying life and its prevalence. In this paper an abstract -- yet realistic -- synthetic system made of small synthetic protocell aggregates is studied in detail. A fundamental relation between free energy and entropic gradients is derived for a general, non-equilibrium scenario, setting the thermodynamic conditions for the occurrence and prevalence of duplication phenomena. This relation sets explicitly how the energy gradients invested in creating and maintaining structural -- and eventually, functional -- elements of the system must always compensate the entropic gradients, whose contributions come from changes in the translational, configurational and macrostate entropies, as well as from dissipation due to irreversible transitions. Work/energy relations are also derived, defining lower bounds on the energy required for the duplication event to take place. A specific example including real ternary emulsions is provided in order to grasp the orders of magnitude involved in the problem. It is found that the minimal work invested over the system to trigger a duplication event is around $sim 10^{-13}{rm J}$. Without aiming to describe a truly biological process of duplication, this theoretical contribution seeks to explicitly define and identify the key actors that participate in it.
We develop a thermodynamic framework for closed and open chemical networks applicable to non-elementary reactions that do not need to obey mass action kinetics. It only requires the knowledge of the kinetics and of the standard chemical potentials, and makes use of the topological properties of the network (conservation laws and cycles). Our approach is proven to be exact if the network results from a bigger network of elementary reactions where the fast-evolving species have been coarse grained. Our work should be particularly relevant for energetic considerations in biosystems where the characterization of the elementary dynamics is seldomly achieved.