PH 419 Physics of Biological Systems

Course Instructor: Mithun Mitra

Course Type:  Honours Elective
Prerequisites: No formal prerequisites. Knowledge of basic statistical mechanics is assumed.
Course Content:

1. Random walks, diffusion and drift- diffusion equations, first passage time.
2. Fluid dynamics at low Reynolds number.
3. Shannon entropy, ligand- receptor binding, ion channels as multi-state systems, chemical potential of solutions.
4. polymers (as random walks, freely rotating chain model, entropic springs), self-avoiding polymer, polymer force extension curves, chromatin packing.
5. corrections due to crowding, depletion forces.
6. Michaelis-Menten kinetics.
7. dynamics of cytoskeletal filaments, actin treadmilling, dynamic instability of microtubules.
8. Molecular motors, p-state model, polymerization ratchet, translocation ratchet.
9. Pattern formation.

Books to refer:

Physical biology of the cell by Rob Phillips, Biological physics by Phil Nelson

Course Structure:

1. No attendance policy, a mix of slides and blackboard lectures. It was a small class, so the lectures involved a lot of discussion between the students and the instructor.
2. There were of 6 graded assignments. The difficulty level was on the easy side.
3. 3 quizzes, midsem, endsem and a project. Almost all exam problems were based on problems studied in real research papers, which are of course cited in the question paper. This is great in two ways: First, you get a nice feeling of accomplishment when you're able to solve the problem and second you can read up further about the actual work done in the paper and it's implications, after the exam.

Advanced Follow-up Course: Advanced statistical mechanics (if you're interested in the statistical mechanics aspect of biology)

Personal Comments: 

The instructor invited students to suggest topics to add at the end of the regular syllabus. Since it's a very new course, he welcomes feedback regarding topics. If you're interested in any specific topic in quantitative biology or biological physics, let him know early on so that he can cover the topic(s) after the usual syllabus is completed.

Respondent: Arkya Chatterjee