The bridge between biology and physics

Biology studies life in its variety and complexity. It describes how organisms go about getting food, communicating, sensing the environment, and reproducing. On the other hand, physics looks for mathematical laws of nature and makes detailed predictions about the forces that drive idealized systems. Spanning the distance between

the complexity of life and the simplicity of physical laws is the challenge of biophysics.

Biophysicists study life at every level, from atoms and molecules to cells, organisms, and environments.

Biophysics discovers such questions as how atoms are arranged to work in DNA and proteins. Protein molecules perform the body’s chemical reactions. They push and pull in the muscles that move your limbs. Proteins make the parts of your eyes, ears, nose, and skin that sense your environment. They turn food into energy and light into vision. They are your immunity to illness. Proteins repair what is broken inside of cells, and regulate growth. They fire the electrical signals in your brain. They read the DNA blueprints in your body and copy the DNA for future generations. So, biophysicists discover how proteins work. Understanding these differences in people’s respond to proteins opens new possibilities in drug design diagnosis, and disease control.

Biophysics is a wellspring of innovation for our high-tech economy. The applications of biophysics depend on society’s needs. In the 20th century, great progress was made in treating disease. Biophysics helped to create powerful vaccines against infectious diseases. It described and controlled diseases of metabolism, such as diabetes. And biophysics provided both the tools and the understanding for treating the diseases of growth as cancers. Today we are learning more about the biology of health and society is deeply concerned about the health of our planet.

Advanced instruments created by biophysicists provide the life-saving treatment methods of kidney dialysis, radiation therapy, cardiac defibrillators, and pacemakers. Biophysicists invented instruments for detecting, purifying, imaging, and manipulating

chemicals and materials.

Nowadays society is facing physical and biological problems of global proportions. How will we continue to get sufficient energy? How can we feed the world’s population? How do we remediate global warming? How do we preserve biological diversity? How do we secure clean and plentiful water? Biophysics provides the insight and technologies for meeting these challenges, based on the principles of physics and the mechanisms of biology.

Biophysics discovers how to modify microorganisms for biofuel (replacing gasoline and diesel fuel) and bioelectricity (replacing petroleum products and coal for producing electricity). Biophysics discovers the biological cycles of heat, light, water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, heat, and organisms throughout our planet. Biophysics harnesses microorganisms to clean our water and to produce lifesaving drugs.