The framework of biological stoichiometry stitches together layers of biological organization from genes to ecosystems by connecting element cycling to the biochemical and physiological properties ...

Analyze its chemistry, compare it to known minerals and voilà. But for geologists, this process can be a time-consuming puzzle requiring specialized expertise and a lot of manual calculation.

We shall discuss some sources of non-stoichiometry, and then consider the implications of incomplete coupling, with particular reference to theories of oxidative phosphorylation.