The idea of this course is to discuss biological ideas from a physical perspective. It is a course for life science students who are willing to use calculus, as well as a course for physical science and engineering students who are willing to think about cells and biological molecules. The catalogue description of this course is, "Physical laws, processes and interactions pertaining to biological systems" but this course is about much more than that - the goal is to present the big-picture ideas of biology using ideas and tools developed in first-year physics and calculus.
We want to present a quantitative description of biological systems using basic physics and mathematics. The pre-requisites for this course are Physics 12 or 42 and Math 20 or 22. These courses represent the minimum physical knowledge and mathematical skill needed to deal with the topics that we will cover.
The text we will use is Biological Physics: Energy, Information and Life by Philip Nelson (WH Freeman & Co, 0-7167-4372-8), supplemented by other readings. You can get this book at the UVM bookstore or order it online. Other references that students might find useful include:
Biophysics
- Berg, H., Random walks in biology, Princeton University Press (1993)
- Cantor, C. and Schimmel, P., Biophysical Chemistry, W.H. Freeman (1980)
- Cotterill, R., Biophysics: An Introduction, John Wiley & Sons (2002)
- Daune, M. and Blow, D., Molecular Biophysics: Structures in Motion, Oxford University Press (1999)
- Glaser, R., Biophysics, Springer (2001)
- Nölting, B., Methods in Modern Biophysics, Springer (2003)
Biochemistry
- Berg, J. M., Tymoczko, J. L., Stryer, L., Biochemistry W. H. Freeman (2002)
Structural Biology
- Branden, C.I. and Tooze, Introduction to Protein Structure, Garland Publishing (2001)
- Dickerson, R., and Geis, I., Structure and Action of Proteins, Addison-Wesley (1969)
- Petsko, G. and Ringe, D., Protein Structure and Function, Sinauer Associates (2003)
Performance in the class will be evaluated as follows: