Biological physics

The course aims to provide a general introduction to cellular and molecular biology and to put into context the use of modern physics, through its quantitative methods and approaches, to describe biological systems and their complexity from the molecular to the cellular and tissue scales.

A fundamental point addressed is also the quantification of phenomena, their physical interpretation and their physico-mathematical modeling. The course opens to the philosophy and to the set of themes of this master's course centered on the study of the physical principles of the organization and the dynamics of the living and complex matter.

• Know the biological cell, its molecular components and its main functions.
• Understand how physical and chemical interactions influence the properties of biomolecules (diffusion, self-assembly, conformational changes, ...), related assemblies (cytoskeleton, cytoplasm, nucleus and nucleoplasm, membranes, macromolecular droplets, ...) and other phenomena (intracellular transport, cytoskeletal dynamics, nuclear organization, cell mitosis, cell motility, ...), in vitro (bio-mimetic approach), in the cell and between cells.
• Detect and control the relevant parameters and orders of magnitude characteristic of these properties, assemblies and phenomena.
• Understand the principles of the experimental methods used to measure these parameters.
• Relate physico-chemical phenomena to biological observations in vitro and in vivo (in bacteria, viruses, circulating or adherent cells, ...)
• Extract information, analyze data, and acquire methodological concepts from scientific articles to quantify biological processes, working in small teams of students in class or at home.
• Learn the interdisciplinary language of biology at the new frontiers of physical and material sciences.

Bachelor's degree in Physics, Physics-Chemistry or equivalent