Biophysics: Searching for Principles
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Biophysics: Searching for Principles - William S. Bialek - Google Книги
Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. William S Bialek Publisher: English View all editions and formats Summary: For a new generation of physicists, the phenomena of life pose exciting challenges to physics itself, and biophysics has emerged as an important subfield of this discipline.
Here, William Bialek provides the first graduate-level introduction to biophysics aimed at physics students. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item William S Bialek Find more information about: Offers important lessons about the opportunities for quantitative, physics-style experiments on diverse biological phenomena.
This title emphasizes the unifying power of abstract physical principles to motivate advanced experiments on biological systems. It covers a range of biological phenomena from the physicist's perspective.
Biophysics
Publisher Synopsis William Bialek, Winner of the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, Society for Neuroscience "[T]he book goes beyond being a structured material for readers to learn about biophysics; it takes readers on an incredible journey in discovering fascinating ways in which biological phenomena can be viewed and studied.
User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Similar Items Related Subjects: Here, William Bialek provides the first graduate-level introduction to biophysics aimed at physics students. Bialek begins by exploring how photon counting in vision offers important lessons about the opportunities for quantitative, physics-style experiments on diverse biological phenomena. He draws from these lessons three general physical principles - the importance of noise, the need to understand the extraordinary performance of living systems without appealing to finely tuned parameters, and the critical role of the representation and flow of information in the business of life.
Bialek then applies these principles to a broad range of phenomena, including the control of gene expression, perception and memory, protein folding, the mechanics of the inner ear, the dynamics of biochemical reactions, and pattern formation in developing embryos. Featuring numerous problems and exercises throughout, "Biophysics" emphasizes the unifying power of abstract physical principles to motivate new and novel experiments on biological systems.
It covers a range of biological phenomena from the physicist's perspective. It features problems.
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It is draws on statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and related mathematical concepts. It includes an annotated bibliography and detailed appendixes. The book has appendices, which help a bit for those with less than a deep knowledge of background topics. If you are not versed in Physics you will not get through this book. The aim of the author, Dr. William Bialek of Princeton University, is that of searching for the principles of a theoretical physics of biological systems in short, theoretical biophysics. Accordingly, this can be done by employing mainly the concepts of statistical mechanics together with a good knowledge of biology, its complex structures, and relevant experiments.
The search takes the form of a tour whereby in many places the author speaks directly to the reader for example, page After an introductory chapter Ch. Early physiology experiments carried out in the s are discussed in great detail as well as the 3D structure of the eyes including those of insects and rod and cone cells down to the molecular-level workings of the protein rhodopsin and its cofactor retinal. Next, after a short interlude-summary Ch.
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Of the three principles, I must admit that the most challenging and difficult to understand for me is the second, no fine tuning. In principle, biological systems know nothing about parameters, only we know about them when building a mathematical model of a biological phenomena. Hence, it could be that the fine-tuning principle arises from the models themselves but, perhaps, there might be a deeper principle connected to the physical constraints imposed by the biological superstructures think about the eye that characterize living organisms.
Both scientists as well as the young minds of brilliant students will have to think very deeply about the three principles and contribute their own idea to the field. These candidate principles, therefore, represent a great stimuli for further research.
Chapter 7 Outlook is followed by an Appendix where further topics Poisson processes, diffraction and biological structures, maximum entropy, etc. The book is interspersed with problems, many of which require the writing of small computer codes Matlab is suggested by the author although any high-level language will do , distributed as follows: From this original book one can truly appreciate the approach adopted by a professional physicist toward solving complex biological problems. The book ends with an annotated bibliography where important references about theory and experiments are listed.
A complementary book with a traditional exposition of Biophysics is that of Dr. Roland Glaser now in its 2-nd edition. The content of this book merits six stars. The author wrote for students of physics and did not hide the mathematics or the physics, which is the usual lamentable practice in books on biophysics. But Princeton University Press turned a fine manuscript into a nearly useless hardcover.
PUP used outer margins that are more than two inches wide and inner margins that are scarcely wider than half an inch. The text therefore is crammed into the gutter. Readers must follow each line of text as it curves and dives into the spine of the book.
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To make matters worse, the book weighs 4. This heft may be fine for sumo wrestlers, but it makes reading the book awkward. People should avoid the hardcover edition and buy instead an e-book edition from eBooks. The Kindle edition is even worse than the PUP hardcover: See all 4 reviews.
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