Incorporating growth and resource allocation constraints into a statistical mechanics of living systems

Determine how to incorporate the constraints imposed by organismal growth and biological resource allocation into a statistical mechanics framework for living systems, so that these constraints are explicitly represented within the theory’s variables, ensembles, and predictions.

Background

The essay argues that growth and resource allocation are fundamental to living systems at multiple scales, from subcellular processes to ecosystems. Examples include metabolism, the division of nucleators and actin among cellular structures, and resource partitioning in ecological communities.

While recent work has identified simple models and growth laws that capture key aspects of resource allocation, the author emphasizes that integrating these constraints into a unified statistical mechanics of life has not yet been achieved, identifying this as a major open problem for the community.