Active transport: a kinetic description based on thermodynamic grounds

We show that active transport processes in biological systems can be understood through a local equilibrium description formulated at the mesoscale, the scale to describe stochastic processes. This new approach uses the method established by nonequilibrium thermodynamics to account for the irreversible processes occurring at this scale and provides nonlinear kinetic equations for the rates in terms of the driving forces. The results show that the application domain of nonequilibrium thermodynamics method to biological systems goes beyond the linear domain. A model for transport of Ca2+ by the Ca2+-ATPase, coupled to the hydrolysis of adenosine-triphosphate is analysed in detail showing that it depends on the reaction Gibbs energy in a nonlinear way. Our results unify thermodynamic and kinetic descriptions, thereby opening new perspectives in the study of different transport phenomena in biological systems.