For a more technical discussion on butterfly wing gyroids and their diversity across species, see the amazing work of K. Michielsen and D. The gyroid shape is in the family of minimal surfaces, structures that are appealing if you want to make things very strong while keeping them very light.
To have some fun playing around with gyroids and other triply minimal surfaces, visit Paul Nylander's website www. One of the coolest things about how organisms produce color is that the morphology responsible for both pigment color and structural color can be detected in fossils Figure 6. In the case of pigment, melanosome type and distribution can be used to deduce the color patterns of fossilized birds, mammals, and dinosaurs. In the case of structural color, patterns can be deduced and even seen intact when preservation is so fine that the structural color is retained in the fossil.
The colors of long-dead organisms can be deduced from exceptionally well-preserved fossils. A fossil feather left has a melanosome conformation similar to a modern feather center. From Jakob Vinther [ www. On the right, an exceptionally well-preserved fossil beetle carapace shows intact blue structural color.
Interestingly, the nanometer scale of structures that accounts for structural color are smaller than the molecular scale that cellular enzymes control directly. Therefore, structural color results from self-assembly and autonomous processes that arise from the inherent properties of the constituent monomers and conditions in the extracellular milieu. Research on complex, nanoscale biological structures is in its infancy. Rather than list technical publications, I think it is useful to get students started on thinking about self-assembly principles in general.
From the simulations, which are based on actual data, students can begin to understand how the chemical and physical properties of biological molecules lead to their innate ability to self-organize into predictable shapes. I have barely scratched the surface on the biology—physics interface in this Feature, and I hope readers are intrigued by the science education opportunities afforded by entwining physics and biology.
I will close with a few comments relating to biology—physics curricula. The original idea was that U. There have also been related movements and discussions at the college level. The move to put physics first in the science curriculum has had its ups and downs, mostly losing gains made in the s but not completely disappearing. NEXUS places the physics course second, after an introductory biology course. You can view, and even participate in, this work-in-progress via various comment pages e.
There are many biophysics courses and departments around the world. Phil Nelson at the University of Pennsylvania is the author of an undergraduate biophysics textbook and a leading proponent of meaningful curricular connections between biology and physics www.
Nelson's presentation explores what he thinks are some of the best opportunities to present interesting and important biophysics to undergraduates, primarily in the areas of molecular biophysics, genetics, and bioinformatics, but also in neural processing and imaging. As a finale, you can become inspired by nature after reading Mary Salimi's excellent review article on designs and structures that engineers have derived or copied from living organisms www.
National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Dennis W. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Address correspondence to: Dennis W. Liu gro. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author s.
It is available to the public under an Attribution—Noncommercial—Share Alike 3. Abstract To understand how life works, it is essential to understand physics and chemistry.
Cristina Luiggi, writing in The Scientist To understand how life works, it is essential to understand physics and chemistry. Open in a separate window. Biophysics is a vibrant scientific field where scientists from many fields including math, chemistry, physics, engineering, pharmacology, and materials sciences, use their skills to explore and develop new tools for understanding how biology—all life—works. Physical scientists use mathematics to explain what happens in nature.
Life scientists want to understand how biological systems work. These systems include molecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems that are very complex. Biological research in the 21st century involves experiments that produce huge amounts of data. How can biologists even begin to understand this data or predict how these systems might work?
This is where biophysicists come in. Biophysicists are uniquely trained in the quantitative sciences of physics, math, and chemistry and they are able tackle a wide array of topics, ranging from how nerve cells communicate, to how plant cells capture light and transform it into energy, to how changes in the DNA of healthy cells can trigger their transformation into cancer cells, to so many other biological problems. Biophysicists work to develop methods to overcome disease, eradicate global hunger, produce renewable energy sources, design cutting-edge technologies, and solve countless scientific mysteries.
In short, biophysicists are at the forefront of solving age-old human problems as well as problems of the future. In one of the first collaborations between physics and biology, it is very interesting to understand how physics has helped biology to reveal one of the most complex and crucial phenomena. In an interesting instance, physicist dive in the biological area by providing a service typically related to imaging.
Medical imaging such as MRI, CAT scans and ultrasound are familiar in hospital settings and are extensively used in treatment, diagnostics and developing medical theories wherein much of such work is attributed to physicists and engineers. A microscope is not less than a divine eye which is almost responsible for defining life at its minute level.
Hence some basic knowledge in physics will help anyone to master in microscopy which eventually will help in understanding biology better under the lens. The very idea of adaptation and fitness is very hard to pin down often ending sounding circular. England explains this idea in the most basic form as the ability of a system to persist in the state of constant throughput of energy by oppressing big fluctuations and dissipating that energy. Computer modeling is very commonly used to understand and manipulate the structures and shapes of proteins, complex molecules, and viruses.
Also, crucial information extracted from computer models is used for developing new drug targets to understand how proteins mutate and cause tumors to grow. Also, simulations and computer models are used to make predictions in other biological fields like evolutionary biology, ecology, cell biology, molecular biology, etc. The vast amount of data which is generated from sequences of DNA from a huge number of humans and other living organisms can be read and analyzed efficiently with the help of biophysical techniques.
With the help of computer models, biophysicist is learning how to build neural networks in order to understand how the nervous system and brain works hence leading to novel understanding of how visual and auditory information is processed. Biophysicists usually use fluorescent tags which helps them to understand life under the microscope.
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