Instructors: Sriram Ramaswamy, Shashi Thutupalli and Vijay Krishnamurthy
When & Where: Tue & Fri 1400-1530, Physics department, IISc
The first meeting of this course will be on Tue 7 Aug 2018.
If you plan to credit/audit this course, please send an email to vijaykumar AT icts DOT res DOT in.
Outline
- the living state as a physicist sees it
- what a cell contains
- noise and biological information
- random walks, Brownian motion, diffusion
- fluid flow in cell and microbe biology
- entropic forces, electrostatics, chemical reactions, self-assembly
- macromolecules: statistics, forces, folding, melting
- molecular machines
- electrical transport across membranes: neurons, nerve impulses
- cell membrane mechanics: elasticity, order, shape, dynamics
- the cytoskeleton and cell mechanics
- collective motility
Prerequisites
Mechanics and Statistical physics at 1st-year graduate student level
Evaluation
Homework assignments, mid-semester & end-semester exams
Textbooks
- Philip Nelson, Biological Physics: Energy, Information, Life (W. H. Freeman, 2014)
- R Phillips, J Kondev, J Theriot, H Garcia, Physical Biology of the Cell (Garland Science 2013)
- W Bialek, Biophysics: Searching for Principles (Princeton University Press 2012)
References
Random walks, Diffusion, Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations
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"The dichotomous history of diffusion", Narasimhan, Physics Today (2009)
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"Pollen grains, random walks and Einstein", Ramaswamy, Resonance (2000)
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"Simplified derivation of the Fokker‐Planck equation", Siegman, American Journal of Physics (1979)
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"The multivariate Langevin and Fokker–Planck equations", Gillespie, American Journal of Physics (1996)
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"Fluctuation and dissipation in Brownian motion", Gillespie, American Journal of Physics (1993)
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"Random walks and diffusion", Domb & Offenbacher, American Journal of Physics (1978)
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"The mathematics of Brownian motion and Johnson noise", Gillespie, American Journal of Physics (1996)
Bacterial motility
- "Motile Behavior of Bacteria", Berg, Physics Today (2007)