The energy costs of biological insulators
  Biochemical signaling pathways can be insulated from impedance and competition effects through enzymatic "futile cycles" which consume energy, typically in the form of ATP. We hypothesize that better insulation necessarily requires higher energy consumption, and provide evidence, through the computational analysis of a simplified physical model, to support this hypothesis. 
John Barton, Eduardo D. Sontag
q-bio.MN q-bio.CB