Statistical physics for biological matter

Author(s)
    • Sung, Wokyung
Bibliographic Information

Statistical physics for biological matter

Wokyung Sung

(Graduate texts in physics)

Springer, c2018

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book aims to cover a broad range of topics in statistical physics, including statistical mechanics (equilibrium and non-equilibrium), soft matter and fluid physics, for applications to biological phenomena at both cellular and macromolecular levels. It is intended to be a graduate level textbook, but can also be addressed to the interested senior level undergraduate. The book is written also for those involved in research on biological systems or soft matter based on physics, particularly on statistical physics. Typical statistical physics courses cover ideal gases (classical and quantum) and interacting units of simple structures. In contrast, even simple biological fluids are solutions of macromolecules, the structures of which are very complex. The goal of this book to fill this wide gap by providing appropriate content as well as by explaining the theoretical method that typifies good modeling, namely, the method of coarse-grained descriptions that extract the most salient features emerging at mesoscopic scales. The major topics covered in this book include thermodynamics, equilibrium statistical mechanics, soft matter physics of polymers and membranes, non-equilibrium statistical physics covering stochastic processes, transport phenomena and hydrodynamics. Generic methods and theories are described with detailed derivations, followed by applications and examples in biology. The book aims to help the readers build, systematically and coherently through basic principles, their own understanding of nonspecific concepts and theoretical methods, which they may be able to apply to a broader class of biological problems.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction : Biological Systems, and Physical ApproachesBring Physics to Life, Bring Life to Physics. Part A: Equilibrium Structures and Properties. 2. Basic Concepts of Relevant Thermodynamics. 2.1 The First Law and Thermodynamic Potentials. 2.2 The Second Law and Thermodynamic Variational Principles. 3. Basic Methods of Equilibrium Statistical Physics. 3.1 Boltzmann's Entropy and Probability, Microcanonical Ensemble Theory. 3.2 Canonical Ensemble Theory. 3.3 The Gibbs Canonical Ensemble. 3.4 Grand Canonical Ensemble Theory. 4. Statistical Mechanics of Fluids and Solutions. 4.1 Phase-space Description of Fluids. 4.2 Fluids of Non-interacting Particles. 4.3 Fluids of Interacting Particles. 4.4 Extension to Solutions: Coarse-grained Descriptions. 5. The Coarse-grained Descriptions for Biological Complexes. 6. Water and Weak Electrostatic Interactions. 6.1 Thermodynamic Properties of Water. 6.2 The Interactions in Water. 6.3 Screened Coulomb Interaction. 7. Law of Chemical Forces: Transitions, Reactions and Self-assembly. 7.1 Law of Mass Action (LMA). 7.2 Self-Assembly. 8. Lattice and Ising Models. 8.1 Adsorption and Aggregation of Molecules. 8.2 Binary Mixtures. 8.3 1-D Ising Model and Applications. 9. Response, Fluctuations, Correlations, and Scatterings. 9.1 Linear Responses and Fluctuations: Fluctuation-Response Theorem. 9.2 Scatterings, Fluctuations, and Structures of Matter. 10. Mesoscopic model for Polymers: Flexible Chains. 10.1 Random Walk Model for a Flexible Chain. 10.2 A Flexible Chain under External Fields and Confinements. 10.3 Effects of Segmental Interactions. 10.4 Scaling Theory. 11. Mesoscopic model for Polymers: Semi-flexible Chain Model and Polyelectrolytes. 11.1 Worm-like chain model. 11.2 Fluctuations in nearly straight semi-flexible chains and the force-extension relation. 11.3 Polyelecrolytes. 12. Membranes and Elastic Surfaces. 12.1 Membrane Self-assembly and Transition. 12.2 Mesoscopic Model for Elastic Energies and Shapes. 12.3 Effects of Thermal Undulations. Part B: Non-equilibrium Phenomena. 13.Brownian Motions. 13.1 Brownian Motion/Diffusion Equation Theory. 13.2 Diffusive Transport in Cells. 13.3 Brownian Motion/Langevin Equation Theory. 14. Stochastic Processes, Markov Chains and Master Equations. 14.1 Markov Processes. 14.2 Master Equation. 15. Theory of Markov Processes & The Fokker-Planck Equations. 15.1 Fokker-Planck Equation (FPE). 15.2 The Langevin and Fokker-Planck Equations from Phenomenology and Effective Hamiltonian. 15.3 Solutions of Fokker-Planck Equations, Transition Probabilities and Correlation Functions. 16. The Mean-First Passage Times and Barrier Crossing Rates. 16.1 First Passage Time and Applications. 16.2 Rate Theory: Flux-over Population Method. 17. Dynamic Linear Responses and Time Correlation Functions. 17.1 Time-dependent Linear Response Theory. 17.2 Applications of the Fluctuation-dissipation Theorem. 18. Noise-induced Resonances: Stochastic Resonance and Resonant Activation, and Stochastic Ratchet. 18.1 Stochastic Resonance. 18.2 Resonant Activation (RA) and Stochastic Ratchet. 18.3 Stochastic ratchet. 19. Transport Phenomena and Fluid Dynamics. 19.1 Hydrodynamic Transport Equations. 19.2 Dynamics of Viscous Flow. 20. Dynamics of Polymers and Membranes in Fluids. 20.1 Dynamics of Flexible Polymers. 20.2 Dynamics of a Semiflexible Chain. 20.3 Dynamics of Membrane Undulation. 20.4 A Unified View. 21. Epilogue.

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