Biological Physics
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| Yan Chen a research associate in Joachim Mueller's group, performs fluorescent fluctuation spectroscopy. |
In biological physics, quantitative aspects and ideas and techniques of physics research are applied to biological problems. Physics has been evolving in the direction of studying more complex systems, and in doing so, has begun to expand its subject area to include living systems.
For example, Professor Joachim Mueller leads an experimental group who are studying the kinetic pathways that occur when proteins misassemble, a topic that has relevance in research on Alzheimer's disease. His lab features a novel approach to fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy (a process where a fluorescent compound is injected into a cell and studied under a microscope) with the innovation of a high pressure cell that allows spectroscopy over a broad range of pressures.
Vincent Noireaux, experimentalist in biophysics, studies in vivo and in vitro gene expression, artificial cell, cytoskeleton and artificial motility.
Another experimentalist, John Broadhurst, analyzes signal processing in the human brain with a non-invasive technique known as magneto-encephalography, which measures activity in the audio cortex.
Theorists Boris Shklovskii and Alexander Grosberg are studying, among other things, charge inversion in DNA with a computer simulation of electrophoresis (the migration of charged molecules such as proteins in an electrical field).
Biological Physics Faculty
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