Aim: Examine concepts and questions of living matter within a physical framework.
Outline: principles of living matter
What is living matter? basic processes, molecules, systems and scales.
Information theory and its application to biology: noise and representation.
Physics of DNA and proteins (molecular recognition): the physical basis.
Networks in biology (biochemical, genetic, neural): emergence, collective.
Evolution theory: memory.
Lecture 1-2: Life and the stuff it is made from
What is Life? •
The molecular building blocks of life •
Scaling and natural units in Physics and biology;
The hydrogen atom of biology - E. coli and its molecular census •
Eukaryotes •
Hierarchy in biology.
Lecture 3: Information in Biology
What is Information? •
The mathematical theory of information (Shannon) •
Information and Thermodynamics
• Maximum entropy principle.
Lecture 10: Enzymes and molecular machines
Survey of molecular devices in cells •
Mechanical machines •
Molecular implementation of mechanical principles •
Kinetics of enzymes and molecular machines