Physical Biology of the Cell - Heidelberg 2022
About
It is a wonderful time to be thinking about the workings of the living world. Historic advances in molecular biology, structural biology and the use of biophysical techniques such as optical traps have provided an unprecedented window on the mechanics of the cell. The aim of this course is to study the cell and its components using whatever tools we need in order to make quantitative and predictive statements about cellular life. The main intellectual thread of the course will be the idea that the type of quantitative data which is becoming routine in biology calls for a corresponding quantitative modeling framework. The plan of this course is to elucidate general principles with exciting case studies.
Where and When?
This course is taking place at EMBL Heidelberg from April 20-27th. The daily schedule will be roughly as follows:
| 9:00 - 12:30 | Rob/Jane lecture (with coffee break) |
| 12:30- 14:00 | lunch |
| 14:00 - 16:00 | Rob/Jane lecture |
| 16:00 - 18:00 | guest speaker and meet the speaker |
| 18:00 - 19:30 | dinner |
| 19:30 - 21:00 | computational excercises with Rachel |
Course Syllabus
This is a tentative syllabus and will be updated as the course progresses.
| Day | Lecture Topics | Computational Exercises |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday April 20 | Order of magnitude thinking, bacterial growth dynamics | Image analysis of bacterial growth, solving ODEs numerically |
| Thursday April 21 | Chemical master equations, diffusion | Simulating diffusion |
| Friday April 22 | Probability distributions and biological applications | Gillepsie algorithms |
| Saturday April 23 | Defying equilibrium and case studies of biological defiance | Simulating kinetic proofreading |