Courses

In this course, students will acquire a foundation in cell biology with an emphasis on membranes and polymers – from the quantitative perspectives of thermodynamics, statistical physics, and mechanics. Students will be introduced to concepts, such as the worm-like chain model for polymer stretching, Rouse model for polymer and membrane dynamics, the idea of thermal energy (k T ~ 4 pN × nm at 300K), forces for protein unfoldings (from 15 pN for spectrin to 200 pN for titin), membrane mechanics (i.e., line tension, thermal and mechanical expansivity, bending energy and rupture energy), critical micelle concentration, and grand canonical ensembles for ligand-receptor kinetics or assembly of proteins using recent literature. Ultimately, this course will prepare undergraduate students to pursue their graduate studies and equip graduate students with a deep fundamental knowledge of quantitative analytical techniques for characterizations for single-molecules, ligand-receptor binding, membranes, and cells.