by William Bialek (Author)
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
