- Introduction: What is life, cells as building blocks of life;
- Basic facts about cells: Nuclear and cytoskeletal elements, biopolymer, membrane, molecular motors, DNA, Proteins and other major large and small molecules;
- Forces in the living world: Chemical forces, coulomb forces, Van der Waals interaction, electrostatic, hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic effect, entropic forces, depletion forces, excluded volume interaction;
- Essential thermodynamics and statistical physics: Temperature, free energy, entropy, probability distribution, Boltzmann factor; Random walk models in biology.
- Brownian motion and diffusion in biology: Active and passive transport, Fick's law, diffusion equation, diffusion with drift, biological applications of diffusion - modeling cell signaling problem, membrane transport, sedimentation, first passage time
Life at low Reynolds number;
- Physics of Biopolymers: What are polymers, biopolymers, polymerization, persistence length of polymers, size of polymers, radius of gyration, size of a Genome, polymer models - Freely joint chain, Self avoiding random walk, Worm-like chain; scaling laws, DNA loop formation;
- Reaction kinetics; rate equations and dynamics in the cell: Simple models of cytoskeletal filament polymerization
Dynamic of molecular machines- motors, ratchet models;
- Biological electrostatics and electricity: Electrostatic potential, Bjerrum length, effect of screening, role of electricity in cells, action potential, nerve impulse propagation
- Physics of Membrane: Structure, energetics and function;
- Biomechanics: Elasticity theory, stress, strain, extension, bending of beam, buckling, torsion examples from biology;
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