Economic Principles in Cell Biology

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Background knowledge

Cellular economics builds on knowledge from different disciplines and on a history of ideas in biology and beyond. In the section "Reading recommendations" at the end of the book you will find books, articles, and online resources that provide this background information. Readings specific to individual topics can be found in "Recommended readings" sections at the end of each chapter.

Book chapters

Click on the icons or titles to download the chapters (as pdf). Preprint versions of all chapters are available on zenodo. Lecture slides and videos for some of the chapters can be found here.


1. The cell as a factory	2. An inventory of cell components	3. Cell metabolism

4. Metabolic flux distributions	5. Optimization of metabolic fluxes	6. The enzyme cost of metabolic fluxes

7. Optimization of metabolic states	8. Principles of cell growth	9. Resource allocation in complex models

10. Optimal cell behavior in time	11. Diversity of metabolic fluxes in a cell population	12. Cells in the face of uncertainty

13. Strategies for cell size control	14. Economy of organ form and function

Structure of the book

Hover over the icons to see the chapter titles and click to open the chapters (as pdf).