Calorimetry and thermodynamics of living systems

Calorimetry of living systems and classical thermodynamics developed in parallel, from Lavoisier’s early ice calorimeter experiments on guinea pigs, followed by Dubrunfaut’s macrocalorimetric research of fermentation processes and Atwater-Rosa’s whole-body calorimetry on humans and domestic animals, to the introduction of the famous Tian-Calvet instrument that found entrance into so many different fields of biology. In this work, six examples of living-system calorimetry and thermodynamics are presented. These are: (i) glycolytic oscillations far off the thermodynamic equilibrium; (ii) growth and energy balances in fermenting and respiring yeast cultures; (iii) direct and indirect calorimetric monitoring of electrically stimulated reptile metabolism; (iv) biologic and climatic factors influencing the temperature constancy and distribution in the mound of a wood ant colony as an example of a complex ecological system; (v) energetic considerations on the clustering of European honeybees in winter as a means to save energy and stored food as well as for their Japanese counterparts in defending against hornet predators; and (vi) energetic and evolutionary aspects of the mass specific entropy production rate, the so-called bound dissipation or psiu-function. The examples presented here are just a very personal selection of living systems from a broad spectrum at all levels of complexity. Common for all of them is that they were investigated calorimetrically on the background of classical and irreversible thermodynamics.