Economic Principles in Cell Biology          

How can a cell maintain itself as a living being? Living cells, shaped by billions of years of evolution, have developed many ways to adapt to their environment, e.g. by regulation of gene expression. But the rules of physics and chemistry enforce certain boundaries on what cells can achieve and how they can allocate their own resources. Our goal is to uncover some of these governing principles. Shaped by evolution, cells "do certain things right", and computational models of cells often assume that this "doing something right" can be described by evoking optimality principles.

While biological optimality is often contested for good reasons, theories based on economic principles can explain many observations (about cell growth or the usage of cellular resources) much better than purely mechanistic models. Methods such as Flux Balance Analysis are well established, but the idea of resource allocation is gaining ground, and metaphors like "currency metabolites" or "energy budget" are common in cell biology, optimality principles are often applied ad hoc, and a coherent picture - in which many single observations or models would have their place - is still missing.

In our book - to which anyone can contribute - we intend to give an overview of established approaches to "cellular economics", from descriptions of simple metabolic systems to cell growth, variability, and dynamic behaviour.