The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP, Trieste, Italy) is organizing the above workshop to take place at the ICTP from 23 to 27 June 2014.
In recent years the dynamics of biological systems has been increasingly described using concepts and terminology borrowed from economics: cells face trade-offs between different strategies for survival; the generation of proteins from DNA displays multiple levels of subtle, optimal efficiency; metabolism can be viewed as a resource allocation problem; biomolecules can be associated with a “value” within the free energy “market” of the cell. These concepts indicate the emergence of a new way of thinking about problems in biology. We envisage that innovation in several important areas of biology can ensue from exploring in more depth and in a more coherent way this connection between cellular dynamics and concepts traditionally used in economics. 

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together systems biologists and physicists whose research has brought them to an economy-inspired view of the cell. Scientists from different backgrounds will discuss biological questions that can be addressed using concepts of resource allocation, efficiency and optimality. The following topics will be covered:

(1) Genome-scale cellular metabolism and the global molecular budget of a cell; 
(2) The economy of gene expression and protein synthesis: the cellular adaptations to translational 
efficiency; 
(3) Benefits and costs in cellular fitness; 
(4) Trade-offs and Pareto-optimality 
in biological systems; 
(5) Game theory in cellular and multicellular biology; and 
(6) Economics of cognitive-like processes at the cellular level.