Biological Physics focuses on new results in molecular motors, self-assembly, and single-molecule manipulation that have revolutionized the field in recent years, and integrates these topics with classical results. The text also provides foundational material for the emerging field of nanotechnology.
During development cells and tissues undergo changes in pattern and form that employ a wider range of physical mechanisms than at any other time in an organism's life. This book demonstrates how physics can be used to analyze these biological phenomena. Written to be accessible to both biologists and physicists, major stages and components of the biological development process are introduced and then analyzed from the viewpoint of physics. The presentation of physical models requires no mathematics beyond basic calculus.
A physicist's guide to the phenomena of life Interactions between the fields of physics and biology reach back over a century, and some of the most significant developments in biology—from the discovery of DNA's structure to imaging of the human brain—have involved collaboration across this disciplinary boundary. For a new generation of physicists, the phenomena of life pose exciting challenges to physics itself, and biophysics has emerged as an important subfield of this discipline. Here, William Bialek provides the first graduate-level introduction to biophysics aimed at physics students. Bialek begins by exploring how photon counting in vision offers important lessons about the opportunities for quantitative, physics-style experiments on diverse biological phenomena. He draws from these lessons three general physical principles—the importance of noise, the need to understand the extraordinary performance of living systems without appealing to finely tuned parameters, and the critical role of the representation and flow of information in the business of life. Bialek then applies these principles to a broad range of phenomena, including the control of gene expression, perception and memory, protein folding, the mechanics of the inner ear, the dynamics of biochemical reactions, and pattern formation in developing embryos. Featuring numerous problems and exercises throughout, Biophysics emphasizes the unifying power of abstract physical principles to motivate new and novel experiments on biological systems. Covers a range of biological phenomena from the physicist's perspective Features 200 problems Draws on statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and related mathematical concepts Includes an annotated bibliography and detailed appendixes
This book aims to demystify fundamental biophysics for students in the health and biosciences required to study physics and to understand the mechanistic behaviour of biosystems. The text is well supplemented by worked conceptual examples that will constitute the main source for the students, while combining conceptual examples and practice problems with more quantitative examples and recent technological advances.
This book aims to cover a broad range of topics in statistical physics, including statistical mechanics (equilibrium and non-equilibrium), soft matter and fluid physics, for applications to biological phenomena at both cellular and macromolecular levels. It is intended to be a graduate level textbook, but can also be addressed to the interested senior level undergraduate. The book is written also for those involved in research on biological systems or soft matter based on physics, particularly on statistical physics. Typical statistical physics courses cover ideal gases (classical and quantum) and interacting units of simple structures. In contrast, even simple biological fluids are solutions of macromolecules, the structures of which are very complex. The goal of this book to fill this wide gap by providing appropriate content as well as by explaining the theoretical method that typifies good modeling, namely, the method of coarse-grained descriptions that extract the most salient features emerging at mesoscopic scales. The major topics covered in this book include thermodynamics, equilibrium statistical mechanics, soft matter physics of polymers and membranes, non-equilibrium statistical physics covering stochastic processes, transport phenomena and hydrodynamics. Generic methods and theories are described with detailed derivations, followed by applications and examples in biology. The book aims to help the readers build, systematically and coherently through basic principles, their own understanding of nonspecific concepts and theoretical methods, which they may be able to apply to a broader class of biological problems.
This book mainly focuses on key aspects of biomembranes that have emerged over the past 15 years. It covers static and dynamic descriptions, as well as modeling for membrane organization and shape at the local and global (at the cell level) scale. It also discusses several new developments in non-equilibrium aspects that have not yet been covered elsewhere. Biological membranes are the seat of interactions between cells and the rest of the world, and internally, they are at the core of complex dynamic reorganizations and chemical reactions. Despite the long tradition of membrane research in biophysics, the physics of cell membranes as well as of biomimetic or synthetic membranes is a rapidly developing field. Though successful books have already been published on this topic over the past decades, none include the most recent advances. Additionally, in this domain, the traditional distinction between biological and physical approaches tends to blur. This book gathers the most recent advances in this area, and will benefit biologists and physicists alike.
Medical and Biological Physics Introduction to Medical and Biological Physics Fundamentals of Biological Systems Biomechanics and Biophysics Bioelectromagnetism and Bioelectricity Radiation Physics in Medicine Imaging Techniques in Biology and Medicine Spectroscopic Methods in Biological and Medical Research Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Nanotechnology in Biology and Medicine Ultrasound and its Applications in Medicine Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Principles and Techniques Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Medical and Biological Physics
This book comprehensively addresses the physics and engineering aspects of human physiology by using and building on first-year college physics and mathematics. Topics include the mechanics of the static body and the body in motion, the mechanical properties of the body, muscles in the body, the energetics of body metabolism, fluid flow in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, the acoustics of sound waves in speaking and hearing, vision and the optics of the eye, the electrical properties of the body, and the basic engineering principles of feedback and control in regulating all aspects of function. The goal of this text is to clearly explain the physics issues concerning the human body, in part by developing and then using simple and subsequently more refined models of the macrophysics of the human body. Many chapters include a brief review of the underlying physics. There are problems at the end of each chapter; solutions to selected problems are also provided. This second edition enhances the treatments of the physics of motion, sports, and diseases and disorders, and integrates discussions of these topics as they appear throughout the book. Also, it briefly addresses physical measurements of and in the body, and offers a broader selection of problems, which, as in the first edition, are geared to a range of student levels. This text is geared to undergraduates interested in physics, medical applications of physics, quantitative physiology, medicine, and biomedical engineering.