BIOPHYSICS,
PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

A.A.
2016-2017, 6 ECTS.

a course for the Master Program in Physics and
the AtoSim Erasmus Mundus Master, given in the 2nd semester: from
the 6thof march 2017 to the first of june 2017.

Time schedule: mon. and wed. 9-11 am Careri room
(Marconi Building)

Instructor: Andrea Giansanti, room 211 (2nd
floor, Marconi Building) tel. 0649914367 Andrea.Giansanti@roma1.infn.it

BASIC PHYSICAL LAWS AND LIVING CELLS: CONCEPTS AND EXPERIMENTS.

Description/Objectives. This course used to follow a course of
Introductory Biophysics, given as an optional third year course in the BA
program. Unfortunately, the BA course was abolished, and we had to compress or
skip much of the advanced topics. Nevertheless this course is conceived as a
compact introduction to the methods (techniques) and arguments (ideas and
principles) of contemporary biophysics. The style of the course will be by
illustration, not by exhaustive demonstration, and requires from the students
active participation. Lectures based on detailed chalk demonstration (in the
math style) will be limited in number. On the contrary, extensive reference to
the literature and to many specialized texts will be offered as a thread for
personal study. The objective of the course is, in a nutshell, to narrow the
gap between the institutional level of training and that of research.

Requirements. Enrolled students should
have taken the basic courses of the BA program. In particular, basic competence
in mechanics, thermodynamics, chemical equilibrium and quantum mechanics is
required.

Evaluation: based onwritten essays, written tests and
homeworks: 40%. Oral exam: 60%.

Topics. The themes of the course
will be partitioned into two tracks: T1,
ARGUMENTS; T2, TECHNIQUES.

Recommended texts.

[DB] K.A.Dll & S. Bromberg,
Molecular Driving Forces, Garland Science ,(2nd edition) 2011.

[BQ] D. Beard & H.Qian, Chemical
Biophysics, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

[PBC] R. Phillips, J. Kondev, J.
Theriot, Physical Biology of the Cell,
Taylor and Francis, 2008.

[HA] Paul G.Higgs, Teresa
K.Attwood, Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution, Blckwell, 2006.

[W] Waigh_T.A., Applied Biophysics,
Wiley, 2007.

[Griebel2007]M.
Griebel, S. Kanpek and G Zumbusch, Numerical Simulation in Molecular Dynamics,
Springer, (2007).