Physical Biology of the Cell

Summary: A philosophy of the book is to show how the graphical, non-quantitative models used by biologists to explain their experimental data can be converted into quantitative (mathematical or physical) models. The book begins with a discussion of what physical models and biological graphical representations are and how they are useful. Part II of the book concerns the modeling of structure in biology, which includes for exa...mple how some engineering principles normally used in building design and construction relate to biological molecular or organ structures. in Part III the authors move to discussing dynamics and fluctuations in biology - processes rather than structures. The final section, Part IV, is titled Information and Biology and uses topics in bioinformatics and systems biology to show some general principles of how the large amounts of information being generated by biologists can be handled. [read more]