Extent of detailed-balance violation and role of reversibility in cellular molecular processes

Determine the extent to which cellular molecular processes violate detailed balance and ascertain the degree to which reversibility is a determining factor in the dynamics of molecular machinery, with particular attention to transcriptional regulation and related non-equilibrium activities in living cells.

Background

The paper frames cells as fundamentally non-equilibrium systems and highlights the irreversibility evident in proliferating populations. While the paper develops analytic tools for quantifying entropy production in a two-state model of transcription and applies them to large datasets, it emphasizes that a broader understanding of how molecular processes break detailed balance and how reversibility influences molecular dynamics remains unresolved.

By deriving and analyzing entropy production rates, the work provides a data-driven perspective showing that many genes avoid high entropy production regimes. However, the authors also demonstrate that mesoscopic entropy production does not tightly bound microscopic thermodynamic costs, underscoring that the foundational question of detailed-balance violation and reversibility in cellular machinery persists beyond the scope of their specific transcriptional model.