Scaling relations and interstellar dust mass budget in galaxies

Interstellar dust influences the spectral properties of galaxies across a wide wavelength range (from the UV to the FIR), as well as their chemical abundance pattern, as it contains large fractions of heavy elements. Dust can be produced by means of various processes, i. e. directly in cold stellar ejecta, it can grow in the interstellar medium and it can be destroyed by astration and interstellar shocks. In this contribution, I will show how chemical evolution models of galaxies which include dust production can be a useful tool to study the redshift evolution of a few basic galactic scaling relations. In particular, the analysis of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio of galaxies of different masses allows us to derive important constraints on some of their most fundamental parameters, including the stellar initial mass function. I will also present a new, direct assessment of the evolution of the cosmic dust mass budget up to high redshift