The Physics of Bacteria

Dr Thomas Andrew Waigh is Reader in Biological Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, UK. He has written three books: Applied Biophysics (Wiley, 2002), The Physics of Living Processes (Wiley, 2014) and Some Critical Questions in Biological Physics (IOP, 2017) and has published over 110 articles in peer reviewed journals. He has worked in the field of bacterial biophysics for over 10 years and organized many meetings on 'The physics of microorganisms. He currently works with industrialists on antimicrobial detergents.

Part I. Physical Tools: 1. How to track cells and molecules; 2. Statistics of bacterial motility; 3. The electrochemical potential of a cell; 4. Mesoscopic forces and adhesion; 5. Reaction-diffusion equations; 6. Polymeric structure and dynamics; 7. Colloidal structure and dynamics; 8. Liquid crystals; 9. Low Reynolds number hydrodynamics; 10. Viscoelasticity; 11. Systems biology; 12. Non-linear dynamics; 13. Experimental characterisation techniques; 14. Machine learning; Part II. Single Bacteria: 15. An introduction to bacteria; 16. Growth of bacteria; 17. Motility; 18. Chemotaxis and detection; 19. Molecular machines; 20. Capsules and slimes; Section III. Interacting Bacteria and Biofilms: 21. Dynamics and viscoelasticity of suspensions and biofilms; 22. Interacting populations; 23. Biofilm formation; 24. Action of antibiotics – a physical perspective; 25. Bacterial diseases; 26. Systems biology and synthetic biology with biofilms; 27. Simulation of cells and biofilms 12; 28. Communication between bacteria; 29. Bacteria and electricity; 30. Manipulation of biofilms; 31. Other applications; Appendix.