Sommaire:

Many non-equilibrium features of biological systems are associated to the presence of active elements, which operate using an input of chemical energy. This is the case for instance with molecular motors, which are enzymes capable to convert the chemical energy obtained from ATP hydrolysis into mechanical work. Due to their small size, these enzymes operate typically far from equilibrium and undergo large fluctuations. As a result, in these systems, thermodynamic quantities like work or heat are only defined in a statistical sense, and their study requires stochastic thermodynamics. Biofilaments like microtubules and actin filaments, display unusual non-equilibrium dynamical behaviors, and are also capable to convert chemical energy into mechanical work. Finally, we conclude with some general ideas concerning the application of stochastic thermodynamics to driven or slowly evolving non-equilibrium systems.

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