England's proof of an absolute lower bound on heat production during self-replication is a central text in this discussion: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsre...

Other resources:

Bechtel (2010): Biological mechanisms: organized to maintain autonomy https://mechanism.ucsd.edu/research/bechtel.biologicalmechan...

Walker et al (2015): The informational architecture of a the cell http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03877