Biophysics and Other Topics: Selected Papers by Aharon Katzir-Katchalsky covers papers on polyelectrolytes, mechanochemistry, irreversible thermodynamics, membrane processes, network thermodynamics, biophysics, and science and humanities. The book discusses on polyelectrolytes, the electrostatic potential, thermodynamic properties, interaction with small molecules and ions, and cooperative transitions. The text also describes mechanochemistry; dynamics of macromolecular interactions; hysteresis; and memory. Irreversible thermodynamics, theory of membrane processes, and network thermodynamics a ...
Biophysics and Other Topics: Selected Papers by Aharon Katzir-Katchalsky covers papers on polyelectrolytes, mechanochemistry, irreversible thermodynamics, membrane processes, network thermodynamics, biophysics, and science and humanities. The book discusses on polyelectrolytes, the electrostatic potential, thermodynamic properties, interaction with small molecules and ions, and cooperative transitions. The text also describes mechanochemistry; dynamics of macromolecular interactions; hysteresis; and memory. Irreversible thermodynamics, theory of membrane processes, and network thermodynamics are also considered. The book further tackles the reactions of amino acids with aldoses, polypeptide synthesis, and prebiotic synthesis. The text then encompasses topics on surface activity of polyelectrolytes; properties of the red cell membrane; and science and the humanities. People involved in the study of the above mentioned topics will find the book invaluable.
Biophysics is a rapidly-evolving interdisciplinary science that applies theories and methods of the physical sciences to questions of biology. Biophysics encompasses many disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, biochemistry, medicine, pharmacology, physiology, and neuroscience, and it is essential that scientists working in these varied fields are able to understand each other's research. Comprehensive Biophysics, Nine Volume Set will help bridge that communication gap. Written by a team of researchers at the forefront of their respective fields, under the guidance of Chief Editor Edward Egelman, Comprehensive Biophysics, Nine Volume Set provides definitive introductions to a broad array of topics, uniting different areas of biophysics research - from the physical techniques for studying macromolecular structure to protein folding, muscle and molecular motors, cell biophysics, bioenergetics and more. The result is this comprehensive scientific resource - a valuable tool both for helping researchers come to grips quickly with material from related biophysics fields outside their areas of expertise, and for reinforcing their existing knowledge. Biophysical research today encompasses many areas of biology. These studies do not necessarily share a unique identifying factor. This work unites the different areas of research and allows users, regardless of their background, to navigate through the most essential concepts with ease, saving them time and vastly improving their understanding The field of biophysics counts several journals that are directly and indirectly concerned with the field. There is no reference work that encompasses the entire field and unites the different areas of research through deep foundational reviews. Comprehensive Biophysics fills this vacuum, being a definitive work on biophysics. It will help users apply context to the diverse journal literature offering, and aid them in identifying areas for further research Chief Editor Edward Egelman (E-I-C, Biophysical Journal) has assembled an impressive, world-class team of Volume Editors and Contributing Authors. Each chapter has been painstakingly reviewed and checked for consistent high quality. The result is an authoritative overview which ties the literature together and provides the user with a reliable background information and citation resource
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 addresses the needs of biologists, biochemists and medical biophysicists for an introduction to the subject. The text covers a range of topics from quantum mechanics to pre-biotic evolution.
What is biophysics? As with all subjects which straddle traditional boundaries between fields, it eludes a precise definition. Furthermore, it is impossible to do biophysics without having a certain foundation of knowledge in biology, physics, physical chemistry, chemistry and biochemistry. One approach to a biophysics textbook would be to refer the student to the literature of these neighboring fields, and to leave the selection of the appropriate supplementary material up to the student. The editors of this volume are of the opinion that it is more useful and less time-consuming to present a selection of the supplementary knowledge, in concentrated form, together with the subject matter specific to biophysics. The reader will thus find in this book introductions to such subjects as the structure and function of the cell, the chemical structure of biogenic macromolecules, and even theoretical chemistry. What, indeed, is biophysics? Must we consider it to include physiology, electromedicine, radiation medicine, etc. ? The field has evolved continuously in recent years. Molecular understanding oflife processes has come more and more to the fore. Just as the field of molecular physics has developed to describe structures and processes in the realm of non-living systems, there has been a corresponding development of molecular biophysics.
Biophysics is a new way of looking at living matter. It uses quantitative experimental and theoretical methods to open a new window for studying and understanding life processes. This textbook gives compact introductions to the basics of the field, including molecular cell biology and statistical physics. It then presents in-depth discussions of more advanced biophysics subjects, progressing to state-of-the-art experiments and their theoretical interpretations. The book is unique by offering a general introduction to biophysics, yet at the same time restricting itself to processes that occur inside the cell nucleus and that involve biopolymers (DNA, RNA, and proteins). This allows for an accessible read for beginners and a springboard for specialists who wish to continue their study in more detail.
Depite the rapid expansion of the field of biophysics, there are very few books that comprehensively treat specific topics in this area. Recently, the field of single molecule biophysics has developed very quickly, and a few books specifically treating single molecule methods are beginning to appear. However, the promise of single molecule biophysics is to contribute to the understanding of specific fields of biology using new methods. This book would focus on the specific topic of the biophysics of DNA-protein interactions, and would include the use of new approaches, including both bulk methods as well as single molecule methods. This would make the book attractive to anyone working in the general area of DNA-protein interactions, which is of course a much wider market than just single molecule biophysicists or even biophysicists. The subject of the book will be the biophysics of DNA-protein interactions, and will include new methods and results that describe the physical mechanism by which proteins interact with DNA. For example, there has been much recent work on the mechanism by which proteins search for specific binding sites on DNA. A few chapters will be devoted to experiments and theory that shed light on this important problem. We will also cover proteins that alter DNA properties to facilitate interactions important for transcription or replication. Another section of the book will cover the biophysical mechanism by which motor proteins interact with DNA. Finally, we will cover larger protein-DNA complexes, such as replication forks, recombination complexes, DNA repair interactions, and their chromatin context.
Basic Biophysics for Biology presents the fundamental physical and chemical principles required to understand much of modern biology. The author has made extensive use of illustrations rather than a mathematical approach to establish connections between macroscopic-world models and submicroscopic phenomena. Topics covered include the nucleus, atomic and molecular structure, the principles of thermodynamics, free energy, catalysis, diffusion, and heat flow. Students and professionals in general biology, physiology, genetics, and radiation biology will appreciate this carefully prepared, non-mathematical volume.
