Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology

Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology
Author: W.C.K. Poon
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006-01-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 142000333X

Soft condensed matter physics, which emerged as a distinct branch of physics in the 1990s, studies complex fluids: liquids in which structures with length scale between the molecular and the macroscopic exist. Polymers, liquid crystals, surfactant solutions, and colloids fall into this category. Physicists deal with properties of soft matter system

Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology

Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology
Author: W. C. K. Poon
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2019-10-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367391362

Soft condensed matter physics, which emerged as a distinct branch of physics in the 1990s, studies complex fluids: liquids in which structures with length scale between the molecular and the macroscopic exist. Polymers, liquid crystals, surfactant solutions, and colloids fall into this category. Physicists deal with properties of soft matter systems that are generic and largely independent of chemical details. They are especially fascinated by the way soft matter systems can harness Brownian motion to self-assemble into higher-order structures. Exploring the generic properties of soft matter offers insights into many fundamental questions that cut across a number of disciplines. Although many of these apply to materials and industrial applications, the focus of this volume is on their applications in molecular and cell biology based on the realization that biology is soft matter come alive. The chapters in Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology originated as lectures in the NATO Advanced Science Institute (ASI) and Scottish Universities Summer Schools in Physics with the same name; they represent the thinking of seventeen experts operating at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The book provides a thorough grounding in the fundamental physics of soft matter and then explores its application with regard to the three important classes of biomacromolecules: proteins, DNA, and lipids, as well as to aspects of the biology of cells. The final section of the book considers experimental techniques, covering single molecule force spectroscopy of proteins, the use of optical tweezers, along with X-ray, neutron, and light scattering from solutions. While this work presents fundamentals that make it a suitable text for graduate students in physics, it also offers valuable insights for established soft condensed matter physicists seeking to contribute to biology, and for biologists wanting to understand what the latest think

The Oxford Handbook of Soft Condensed Matter

The Oxford Handbook of Soft Condensed Matter
Author: Eugene Michael Terentjev
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2015
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199667926

This handbook will provide the reader with a profound introduction to the key subjects comprising the relatively new topic of Soft Condensed Matter. It will provide students and researchers with an authoritative overview of the field, identify key principles at play, and the most prominent ways of further development.

Fundamentals of Soft Matter Science

Fundamentals of Soft Matter Science
Author: Linda S. Hirst
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2019-08-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1351754912

This revised edition continues to provide the most approachable introduction to the structure, characteristics, and everyday applications of soft matter. It begins with a substantially revised overview of the underlying physics and chemistry common to soft materials. Subsequent chapters comprehensively address the different classes of soft materials, from liquid crystals to surfactants, polymers, colloids, and biomaterials, with vivid, full-color illustrations throughout. There are new worked examples throughout, new problems, some deeper mathematical treatment, and new sections on key topics such as diffusion, active matter, liquid crystal defects, surfactant phases and more. • Introduces the science of soft materials, experimental methods used in their study, and wide-ranging applications in everyday life. • Provides brand new worked examples throughout, in addition to expanded chapter problem sets and an updated glossary. • Includes expanded mathematical content and substantially revised introductory chapters. This book will provide a comprehensive introductory resource to both undergraduate and graduate students discovering soft materials for the first time and is aimed at students with an introductory college background in physics, chemistry or materials science.

Mechanics of the Cell

Mechanics of the Cell
Author: David H. Boal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 623
Release: 2012-01-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0521113768

New edition exploring the mechanical features of biological cells for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics and biomedical engineering.

Statistical Physics for Biological Matter

Statistical Physics for Biological Matter
Author: Wokyung Sung
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2018-10-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 940241584X

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.

Giant Molecules

Giant Molecules
Author: A. I?U. Grosberg
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2011
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9812839224

?? Giant molecules are important in our everyday life. But, as pointed out by the authors, they are also associated with a culture. What Bach did with the harpsichord, Kuhn and Flory did with polymers. We owe a lot of thanks to those who now make this music accessible ??Pierre-Gilles de GennesNobel Prize laureate in Physics(Foreword for the 1st Edition, March 1996)This book describes the basic facts, concepts and ideas of polymer physics in simple, yet scientifically accurate, terms. In both scientific and historic contexts, the book shows how the subject of polymers is fascinating, as it is behind most of the wonders of living cell machinery as well as most of the newly developed materials. No mathematics is used in the book beyond modest high school algebra and a bit of freshman calculus, yet very sophisticated concepts are introduced and explained, ranging from scaling and reptations to protein folding and evolution. The new edition includes an extended section on polymer preparation methods, discusses knots formed by molecular filaments, and presents new and updated materials on such contemporary topics as single molecule experiments with DNA or polymer properties of proteins and their roles in biological evolution.

Ion Correlations at Electrified Soft Matter Interfaces

Ion Correlations at Electrified Soft Matter Interfaces
Author: Nouamane Laanait
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2013-07-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319009001

Ion Correlations at Electrified Soft Matter Interfaces presents an investigation that combines experiments, theory, and computer simulations to demonstrate that the interdependency between ion correlations and other ion interactions in solution can explain the distribution of ions near an electrified liquid/liquid interface. The properties of this interface are exploited to vary the coupling strength of ion-ion correlations from weak to strong while monitoring their influence on ion distributions at the nanometer scale with X-ray reflectivity and on the macroscopic scale with interfacial tension measurements. This thesis demonstrates that a parameter-free density functional theory that includes ion-ion correlations and ion-solvent interactions is in agreement with the data over the entire range of experimentally tunable correlation coupling strengths. The reported findings represent a significant advance towards understanding the nature and role of ion correlations in charged soft-matter. Ion distributions underlie many scientific phenomena and technological applications, including electrostatic interactions between charged biomolecules and the efficiency of energy storage devices. These distributions are determined by interactions dictated by the chemical properties of the ions and their environment, as well as the long-range nature of the electrostatic force. The presence of strong correlations between ions is responsible for counterintuitive effects such as like-charge attraction.

Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo

Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo
Author: Gabor Forgacs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2005-11-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780521783378

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.

The Physics of Cancer

The Physics of Cancer
Author: Caterina A. M. La Porta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1108150330

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of theoretical and experimental contributions to cancer research from different fields of physics, from biomechanics and soft-condensed matter physics to the statistical mechanics of complex systems. Reviewing these contributions and providing a sophisticated overview of the topic, this is the first book devoted to the emerging interdisciplinary field of cancer physics. Systematically integrating approaches from physics and biology, it includes topics such as cancer initiation and progression, metastasis, angiogenesis, cancer stem cells, tumor immunology, cancer cell mechanics and migration. Biological hallmarks of cancer are presented in an intuitive yet comprehensive way, providing graduate-level students and researchers in physics with a thorough introduction to this important subject. The impact of the physical mechanisms of cancer are explained through analytical and computational models, making this an essential reference for cancer biologists interested in cutting-edge quantitative tools and approaches coming from physics.