Surprisal analysis is an information-theoretical analysis technique that integrates and applies principles of thermodynamics and maximal entropy. Surprisal analysis is capable of relating the underlying microscopic properties to the macroscopic bulk properties of a system. It has already been applied to a spectrum of disciplines including engineering, physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering. Recently, it has been extended to characterize the state of living cells, specifically monitoring and characterizing biological processes in real time using transcriptional data.