Some Critical Questions in Biological Physics (eBook)

Dr Thomas Andrew Waigh was a physics undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh and then completed a PhD in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. This was followed by a two-year post-doc at the Collège de France in Paris, in the laboratory of Pierre Giles de Gennes. He then returned to the UK with a lectureship in physics at the University of Leeds. Currently, he is a senior lecturer in biological physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Previously, he has written two books on biological physics, Applied Biophysics and The Physics of Living Processes: a Mesoscopic Approach, published by Wiley. He has published more than 80 articles.

Preface

Acknowledgements                                                                                                                                     

Author biography                                                                                                                                                           

1              Molecular
communication - crackling phone lines                                                             

2              How
dynein works and other motor proteins                                                                     

3              How
brains work – wiring and consciousness                                                                     

4              Spike
trains and the senses – the mouse’s whiskers                                       

5              Elastic
turbulence – gloopy chaos                                                                                           

6              How
mucus works – the twenty one mysteries in man                                 

7              Synthetic
biology – reengineering bugs and molecules                                 

8              Missing
instruments - grease monkeys required                             

9              The
structure of carbohydrates – the perfect chip                                           

10           Evolution
and antibiotics – bugmageddon                                                          

11          The
regulation of expression in DNA – huge uncertainties in genetics

12          The
origin of sub-diffusion inside cells - everything’s gone fractional

13          Microrheology
- the unexplored continents                                                       

14          Quantum
phenomena in biology – the role of chunks                           

15          The
structure of membranes – uncharted factories                                                  

16          Drug
delivery – gene therapy and other stories                                                                               

17          A
good model for polyelectrolytes – bootstrapping with a many body problem                                                                                                                                                           18          The
activity of hearts – the pump that quivers                                   

A Perspective