Nobody disputes that life creates entropy, but whether living systems augment or diminish the rate of entropy production is still an unresolved question. Do living entities make the least concession possible to entropy by seeking the steady state of minimal entropy production, or do they maximize the rates of dissipation?
We shall use several simple models for cyclic biochemical reactions to calculate entropy production and efficiency of free-energy conversion in a steady state. Our goal will be to explore whether actual operation of these cycles can be better modeled by requiring minimal or maximal entropy production. An optimization principle coming from physics would surely help in predicting behavior of complex metabolic networks revealed after the completion of different genome projects.
Main attention will be devoted to bioenergetics of bacterial and plant photosynthesis, and to ATP driven biochemical cycles.