What is Biophysics?
Biophysics can be generally defined as the study of biological systems from the perspective of the physical sciences. This is the field of science that explains how physical phenomena like mechanics electricity, magnetism, light, heat, and nuclear radiation related to the structure and the function of biological systems. As such, biophysics encompasses many areas of interest, including: • Bioenergetics • Biophysical Theory and Modeling • Cell Biophysics • Channels, Receptors, and Transporters • Electrophysiology • Membranes • Muscle and Contractility • Nucleic Acids • Photobiophysics • Proteins • Spectroscopy, Imaging, and Other Techniques • Supramolecular Assemblies You can get a feel for biophysics by taking a look at the course page for Biophysics & Bio-imaging.
Excerpt taken from The Biophysical Society: Biophysics is that branch of knowledge that applies the principles of physics and chemistry and the methods of mathematical analysis and computer modeling to biological systems, with the ultimate goal of understanding at a fundamental level the structure, dynamics, interactions, and ultimately the function of biological systems. Biophysics seeks to explain biological function in terms of the physical properties of specific molecules. The size of these molecules varies from small fatty acids and sugars (~1 nm = 10–9 m), to macromolecules like proteins (5-10 nm), starches (>1000 nm), and the enormously elongated DNA molecules (over 10,000,000 nm = 1 cm long but only 20 nm wide). These building blocks of living organisms, assemble into cells, tissues, and whole organisms by forming complex individual structures with dimensions of 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 nm and larger. Thus, proteins assemble into the casein micelles of milk, which aggregate to for
Molecular biology itself grew out of biophysics.The British Biophysical Society defines biophysics as: “an interdisciplinary field which applies techniques from the physical sciences to understanding biological structure and function” More information about the various facets of the discipline can be found at the society’s site hosted at Birkbeck College, London. Mike Goodrich wrote to ask what the status of biophysics was given the definition of computational biology submitted by Paul Schulte (below). A recent article in The Scientist [free registration required] dealt with this question—thanks to Jo Wixon (Managing Editor of Comparative and Functional Genomics) for the reference.
