Resource Allocation Principles And Minimal Cell Design

Most natural organisms are generalists, as they deploy cellular resources for growth and survival under changing environments. Minimal cells are thought to be specialists; therefore, they should display specialized behaviors for very specific functions. Depending on the required function to display, the cellular resources should be differentially allocated, generating an optimal resource use that maximizes its designed function. Recently, many studies have focused on the economy of cellular resource allocation in different environments. With several tools and approaches, resource allocation has been extensively studied in natural and engineered cellular systems. These approaches have generated genome-scale models, coarse-grained models, and growth laws that may be used in minimal cell design. In this chapter, we will review the recent advances in econometric approaches to study and engineer resource allocation. We will propose design principles for cell minimization focusing on the cellular resource allocation framework to maximize the functions that they are designed to display.