Ruprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg

Seminar Statistical Physics of Biological Systems, summer term 2013

This seminar is addressed mainly to students who have attended the lecture on Theoretical Statistical Physics and now would like to learn more about applications to biological systems. Each week, one or two students will present on a subject from the list given below. Talks should be given in English and can be presented on the blackboard or as computer presentation. A typical talk would be 35 min with 10 min of discussion. The subjects have been explained and assigned during the first meeting on April 16.

Suggested subjects are

  1. The Luria-Delbrueck experiment (Genetics 1943)
  2. The Monod-Wyman-Changeaux (MWC) model for oxygen binding to hemoglobin (JMB 1965)
  3. Diffusion and random walks (books by Howard Berg, Benedek and Villars, Rob Phillips)
  4. Statistics of polymers (Grosberg and Khokhlov, Statistical Physics of Macromolecules)
  5. Stretching polymers (Marko and Siggia, Macromolecules 1995)
  6. HP-model for protein folding (Ken Dill)
  7. Theory of helix-coil transitions (Poland and Scheraga)
  8. Logic of transcriptional control (Buchler PNAS 2003)
  9. Poisson-Boltzmann and strong coupling theories (book by Dill and Bromberg, papers by Roland Netz)
  10. Conformational spread and the random field Ising model (Tom Duke and Denis Bray, PNAS 1999)
  11. Thermodynamics of vesicle adhesion (Ana Smith and Udo Seifert, PRE 2005)
  12. Thermal ratchet (Astumian and Bier PRL 1994, Julicher and Prost PRL 1995)
  13. Brownian ratchet for polymerization (Peskin, Odell, Oster BPJ 1993)
  14. Asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) (Parmeggiani et al., PRL 2003 and PRE 2004)

Material for the course