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LIT-1885: Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation for Biomolecular Processes

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-31 (NOTE-1480); worth reading as the letter that named the thermodynamic uncertainty relation: a current counted in a steady state with relative uncertainty ε costs at least 2k_BT/ε² of dissipation, proved within linear response and for single-cycle networks, conjectured with numerical support for many-cycle ones (THEORY-1268). It bounds the precision of currents, not of occupations.
Version2
Tagsthermodynamics, natural-sciences
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1480 — Barato & Seifert — thermodynamic uncertainty relation
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1268 — In a nonequilibrium steady state of a thermodynamically consistent Markov jump network, the entropy produced while a current is counted, times the squared relative uncertainty of that count, is at least 2k_B, independent of the counting time, so a current precise to ε costs at least 2k_BT/ε² of dissipation; the 2015 letter proves this within linear response and for single-cycle networks at any affinity, and for many-cycle networks far from equilibrium shows it numerically and states it as a conjecture

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Barato, A. C., & Seifert, U. (2015). Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for biomolecular processes. Physical Review Letters, 114, 158101.

Read in full in NOTE-1480.

Why this is here

A13 §6 cited it as tying the resource cost of maintenance to its precision. Read with Seifert’s review (LIT-523). The reading narrows that: the relation prices the precision of a current, such as a production flux counted over time, and the authors set occupation observables aside explicitly. It does not price how reliably, or for how long, a maintained state is held; that is the escape-rate question of THEORY-1264. Applied to a construction like CASE-189 it bites only once every production step is reversible.

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