General Information


Textbooks

Physical Biology of the Cell

Physical Biology of the Cell
by Phillips, Kondev and Theriot

ISBN: 0815341636

Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

by Weinstein and Adam

ISBN: 0691129495



 

Syllabus


DATE TOPIC

RELEVANT READINGS (papers are linked below and can also be found on the Files page)
Monday, 8/20 A feeling for the numbers in biology, Introduction to Matlab

Cell SnapShot

Feeling for the numbers in Biology
Tuesday, 8/21 Statistical mechanics and regulatory biology, Image Analysis with Matlab

Transcriptional regulation by the numbers: models

Dissection of simple repression

First exposure to stat mech in Biology

Chemotaxis theory 1

Chemotaxis theory 2

Chemotaxis experiments 1

Chemotaxis experiments 2
Wednesday, 8/22 Biophysics of vision

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/
This website is an online book that has tons of interesting stuff about vision and the retina and will give you background on some of the topics to be covered in more detail in class.
Thursday, 8/23 The Physics of Genome Management  - how viruses, prokaryotes and eukaryotes package and access their genomes

Packaging DNA in viruses

DNA-encoded nucleosome organization

Mechanism of Protein Access to Specific DNA Sequences in Chromatin
Friday, 8/24 Physics of Macromolecular Machines: From Muscles to Cell Division, Physical Approaches to Evolution, Analyzing Your Own Experimental Data

The Sarawak Law

Wallace's paper on natural selection