Cell growth and differentiation from the perspective of dynamics and thermodynamics of cellular and subcellular processes

Abstract

This chapter develops the concept that spatio—temporal coordination between thousands of chemical reactions inside the cell concerns cellular metabolism and involves enzyme activity modulation by gene expression. It deals with the following questions. Might a balanced pattern of fluxes, genetically and environmentally determined, be a determinant of growth, proliferation or differentiation? Might that pattern of fluxes somehow mediate gene expression and, say, differentiation? In order to illustrate these concepts we will also be dealing specifically with cell commitment to transit through the cell cycle or to sporulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and will give experimental and theoretical support for the flux coordination hypothesis as a signal involved in proliferation or differentiation.