Abstract

Away from equilibrium, energy can serve as a resource that opens the door to what seems like limitless potential for novel phenomena. To date, however, our understanding of energy’s role has been largely gleaned through individual case studies, leaving it an open question to identify universal principles. In this talk, I will discuss how advances in the field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics allow us to make such general quantitative statements. I will introduce a series of equalities and inequalities—-akin to the Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem but valid arbitrarily far from equilibrium—-that constrain a system’s sensitivity by its structure and how strongly it is driven away from equilibrium. To illustrate these results, I will draw on examples from biophysics and chemistry, where the effectiveness of numerous biochemical systems depends on being exquisitely sensitive to changes in chemical inputs. We will see how these predictions rationalize known energetic requirements of some common biochemical motifs and provide new limits to others.