Biophysics — theme and variation: 9th international biophysics congress jerusalem, israel, 24–29 august 1987
✍ Scribed by Henryk Eisenberg
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1988
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 222 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0265-9247
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Biophysics, constituting the physical approach to modern biology, has been essential in scaling some of the magnificcnt peaks of human achievement. Molecular biology was born in 1953 when the Watson and Crick DNA double helix was created out of brilliant intuition and an understanding of the newly discovered laws of helical diffraction. Electron microscopy and X-ray and neutron diffraction are the most powerful tools for visualizing biological structures on cellular and molecular levels and nuclear magnetic resonance is quickly becoming a bona fide member of this exclusive club. Gel electrophoresis, based on the physical understanding of the motion of diverse charge-carrying biological particles in restricted spaces under the influence of electric fields, has totally revolutionized the experimental approach to genetics and molecular biology. Theoretical approaches have grappled with the pathways and time scale of biological evolution, which are not easily derived from simple Darwinian concepts.