Physical Biology: From Atoms To Medicine

by Ahmed H Zewail

Overview

This is an avant-garde book edited by Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail with contributions from eminent scientists including four Nobel prize winners. The perspectives of these world leaders in physics, chemistry, and biology define potential new frontiers at the interface of disciplines and including physical, systems, and synthetic biology.This book brings about the confluence of concepts and tools, and that of different disciplines, to address significant problems of our time: visualization; theory and computation for complexity; macromolecular function, protein folding and misfolding; and systems integration from cells to consciousness. The scope of tools is wide-ranging, spanning imaging, crystallography, microfluidics, single-molecule spectroscopy, and synthetic probe targeting. Concepts such as dynamic self-assembly, molecular recognition, non-canonical amino acids, and others are covered in various chapters as they are cornerstones in building the trilogy description of behavior-structure, dynamics, and function.The volume is uniquely structured to provide overviews with historical perspectives on the evolution of ideas and on the future of physical biology and biological complexity, from atoms to medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848162006
Publisher:	Imperial College Press
Publication date:	05/06/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	584
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Prologue   Ahmed H. Zewail     xi
The Preoccupations of Twenty-First-Century Biology   David Baltimore     1
The World as Physics, Mathematics and Nothing Else   Alexander Varshavsky     7
Physical Biology: 4D Visualization of Complexity   Ahmed H. Zewail     23
Revolutionary Developments from Atomic to Extended Structural Imaging   John Meurig Thomas     51
Physical Biology at the Crossroads   Carlos J. Bustamante     115
The Challenge of Quasi-Regular Structures in Biology   Roger D. Kornberg     137
The Future of Biological X-Ray Analysis   Douglas C. Rees     145
Reinterpreting the Genetic Code: Implications for Macromolecular Design, Evolution and Analysis   David A. Tirrell     165
Designing Ligands to Bind Tightly to Proteins   George M. Whitesides   Phillip W. Snyder   Demetri T. Moustakas   Katherine A. Mirica     189
Biology by the Numbers   Rob Phillips     217
Eppur si muove   Michele Parrinello     247
Protein Folding and Beyond: Energy Landscapes and the Organization of Living Matter in Time and Space   Peter G. Wolynes     267
Protein Folding and Misfolding: From Atoms toOrganisms   Christopher M. Dobson     289
A Systems Approach to Medicine Will Transform Healthcare   Leroy Hood     337
The Neurobiology of Consciousness   Christof Koch   Florian Mormann     367
Computer-Aided Drug Discovery: Physics-based Simulations from the Molecular to the Cellular Level   J. Andrew McCammon     401
Precision Measurements in Biology   Stephen R. Quake     411
Potassium Channels and the Atomic Basis of Selective Ion Conduction   Roderick MacKinnon     431
The 2007 Welch Award Papers     463
Symmetry Breaking, Delocalization and Dynamics in Electron Transfer Systems   Noel S. Hush     465
The Initial Value Representation of Semiclassical Theory: A Practical Way for Adding Quantum Effects to Classical Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Complex Molecular Systems   William H. Miller     505
Biographies     527