300362 VO+SE Selected Topics at the Biology - Physics Interface (2014S)

In this seminar / lecture course we will discuss and present how a physics based approach to biological questions can lead to qualitatively new insights and potentially the discovery of new principles underlying the organization of living matter and how this process is currently being facilitated by technological advancements. This course is complementary to the lecture -Biological Frontiers of Physics- which is offered in the winter semester. The combination of lecture and seminars (held by students) based on selected recent publications should deepen the understanding and expand the topics covered in the lecture. The main topic of the present course will be "Noise in Biological Systems" with emphasis on the role of noise, fluctuations, stochasticity and quantum decoherence in two important biological domains: protein function at the atomistic level and neuronal signal processing at multiple scales. In addition, we will also discuss the role of thermal fluctuation and environmental noise in the context of quantum decoherence in photosynthetic complexes where quantum coherence has been shown to be important for biological function.