Allometric scaling of metabolic rate from molecules and mitochondria to cells and mammals
TLDR
The framework of a general model of fractal-like distribution networks together with data on energy transformation in mammals is used to analyze and predict allometric scaling of aerobic metabolism over a remarkable 27 orders of magnitude in mass encompassing four levels of organization: individual organisms, single cells, intact mitochondria, and enzyme molecules.Abstract:
The fact that metabolic rate scales as the three-quarter power of body mass (M) in unicellular, as well as multicellular, organisms suggests that the same principles of biological design operate at multiple levels of organization. We use the framework of a general model of fractal-like distribution networks together with data on energy transformation in mammals to analyze and predict allometric scaling of aerobic metabolism over a remarkable 27 orders of magnitude in mass encompassing four levels of organization: individual organisms, single cells, intact mitochondria, and enzyme molecules. We show that, whereas rates of cellular metabolism in vivo scale as M−1/4, rates for cells in culture converge to a single predicted value for all mammals regardless of size. Furthermore, a single three-quarter power allometric scaling law characterizes the basal metabolic rates of isolated mammalian cells, mitochondria, and molecules of the respiratory complex; this overlaps with and is indistinguishable from the scaling relationship for unicellular organisms. This observation suggests that aerobic energy transformation at all levels of biological organization is limited by the transport of materials through hierarchical fractal-like networks with the properties specified by the model. We show how the mass of the smallest mammal can be calculated (≈1 g), and the observed numbers and densities of mitochondria and respiratory complexes in mammalian cells can be understood. Extending theoretical and empirical analyses of scaling to suborganismal levels potentially has important implications for cellular structure and function as well as for the metabolic basis of aging.read more
Citations
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Toward a metabolic theory of ecology
James H. Brown,James H. Brown,James F. Gillooly,Andrew P. Allen,Van M. Savage,Van M. Savage,Geoffrey B. West,Geoffrey B. West +7 more
TL;DR: This work has developed a quantitative theory for how metabolic rate varies with body size and temperature, and predicts how metabolic theory predicts how this rate controls ecological processes at all levels of organization from individuals to the biosphere.
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Beyond the '3/4-power law': variation in the intra- and interspecific scaling of metabolic rate in animals.
TL;DR: The 3/4-power scaling law of metabolic rate is not universal, either within or among animal species as discussed by the authors, and this variation can be related to taxonomic, physiological, and/or environmental differences.
Journal ArticleDOI
Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity
Kenneth J. Locey,Jay T. Lennon +1 more
TL;DR: A unified scaling law is shown that predicts the abundance of dominant species across 30 orders of magnitude to the scale of all microorganisms on Earth and predicts that Earth is home to as many as 1 trillion microbial species.
Journal ArticleDOI
The origin of allometric scaling laws in biology from genomes to ecosystems: towards a quantitative unifying theory of biological structure and organization
TL;DR: A set of principles based on the observation that almost all life is sustained by hierarchical branching networks, which are assumed to have invariant terminal units, are space-filling and are optimised by the process of natural selection are proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI
The predominance of quarter-power scaling in biology
Van M. Savage,Van M. Savage,James F. Gillooly,William H. Woodruff,William H. Woodruff,Geoffrey B. West,Geoffrey B. West,Andrew P. Allen,Brian J. Enquist,James H. Brown,James H. Brown +10 more
TL;DR: It is shown that interspecific variation in BMR, as well as field metabolic rates of mammals, and basal or standard metabolic rates for many other organisms, including vertebrates, invertebrates, protists and plants, all scale with exponents whose confidence intervals include 3 / 4 and exclude 2 / 3.
References
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