Physical Biology of the Cell

Physical Biology of the Cell is a textbook for a first course in physical biology or biophysics for undergraduate or graduate students. It maps the huge and complex landscape of cell and molecular biology from the distinct perspective of physical biology. As a key organizing principle, the proximity of topics is based on the physical concepts that unite a given set of biological phenomena. Herein lies the central premise: that the appropriate application of a few fundamental physical models can serve as the foundation of whole bodies of quantitative biological intuition, useful across a wide range of biological problems. The Second Edition features full-color illustrations throughout, two new chapters, a significantly expanded set of end-of-chapter problems, and is available in a variety of e-book formats.

Part I: The Facts of Life 1. Why: Biology by the Numbers 2. What and Where 3. When: Stopwatches at Many Scales 4. Who: "Bless the Little Beasties" Part II: Life at Rest 5. Mechanical and Chemical Equilibrium 6. Entropy Rules! 7. Two-State Systems 8. Random Walks and the Structure of Macromolecules 9. Electrostatics for Salty Solutions 10. Beam Theory 11. Biological Membranes Part III: Life in Motion 12. The Mathematics of Water 13. A Statistical View of Biological Dynamics14. Crowded and Disordered Environments 15. Rate Equations and Dynamics in the Cell 16. Dynamics of Molecular Motors 17. Biological Electricity 18. Light and Life – NEW CHAPTER Part IV: The Meaning of Life 19. Organization of Biological Networks20. Biological Patterns: Order in Space and Time – NEW CHAPTER21. Sequences, Specificity, and Evolution 22. Whither Physical Biology?

Rob Phillips is the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology at the California Institute of Technology. He received a PhD in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis. Jane Kondev is a Professor of Physics in the Graduate Program in Quantitative Biology at Brandeis University. He received his Physics BS degree from the University of Belgrade, and his PhD from Cornell University. Julie Theriot is a Professor of Biochemistry and of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received concurrent BS degrees in Physics and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of California at San Francisco. Hernan G. Garcia is an Associate Research Fellow at Princeton University. He received a BS in Physics from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in Physics from the California Institute of Technology.