Biophysics importance

Areas of study

The content and methods of biophysics are illustrated by examining several notable contributions to science.

Biological membranes

The availability of radioactive isotopes provided the technology necessary for understanding how molecules are transported across biological membranes, which are the very thin boundaries of living cells; the environment maintained by membranes in cells differs from the external environment and permits cellular function.
The Danish physiologist August Krogh laid the groundwork in this subject; his pupil, Hans Ussing, developed the conceptual means by which the transport of ions (charged atoms) across membranes can be identified.
Ussing’s definition of active transport made possible an understanding, at the cellular level, of the way in which ions and water are pumped into and out of living cells in order to regulate the ionic composition and water balance in cells, organs, and organisms.
The molecular mechanism by which these processes occur, however, remains to be discovered.

Deoxyribonucleic acid

Interest in biophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory resulted in another important discovery, the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic material.
This achievement by a British biophysicist, Francis H.C.
Crick, and by a U.S. biochemist, James Watson, was based on X-ray data obtained by Maurice Wilkins at King’s College, London.
When Crick first went to the Cavendish Laboratory for education in biophysics, he worked under Perutz’s direction; when Watson went to the Cavendish, he and Crick began the collaboration that led to the establishment of the structure of DNA, for which Watson, Crick, and Wilkins later were awarded a Nobel Prize.

Does biophysics have a future?

Historical background

The origin of biophysics antedates the division of natural sciences into separate disciplines.
Bioluminescence must be considered among the most ancient objects of biophysical exploration, because the emission of light by living organisms has long stimulated the curiosity of natural philosophers.
Perhaps the first scientific investigation of animal luminescence was that of Athanasius Kircher, a 17th-century German Jesuit priest, who devoted two chapters of his book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae to bioluminescence.
In the midst of his more scientific observations, Kircher found time to expose as a fallacy the notion that an extract made from fireflies could be used to light houses.

Interdisciplinary work

The biophysical approach is unified by a consideration of biological problems in the light of physical concepts, so that biophysics is, perforce, interdisciplinary.
Biophysics may be thought of as the central circle in a two-dimensional array of overlapping circles, which include physics, chemistry, physiology, and general biology.
Relations with c.

Is biophysics a quantitative study of biological phenomena?

Muscle contraction

A.V.
Hill developed exquisitely sensitive temperature sensors for measuring heat generated during muscular contraction; he initiated studies relating this heat to the thermodynamic parameters responsible for it.
The electron microscope in the years following World War II made possible the description of muscular contraction at a structural level, t.

Overview

biophysics, discipline concerned with the application of the principles and methods of physics and the other physical sciences to the solution of biological problems.
The relatively recent emergence of biophysics as a scientific discipline may be attributed, in particular, to the spectacular success of biophysical tools in unravelling the molecular.

Protein structure

Within two days after the initial publication of Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X rays in 1895, a surgeon in Scotland used X rays to observe a needle as he extracted it from the palm of an unfortunate seamstress.
Although this medical application resulted in the development of radiological diagnosis and treatment of disease by radiation, physical a.

The nerve impulse

Important aspects of biophysics have been derived from physiology, especially in studies involving the conduction of nerve impulses.
One important scientific product of World War II—the development of vastly improved electronics—largely resulted from radar devices that had been used primarily for locating aircraft.
Another product, the atomic bomb, was constructed by way of nuclear reactors that could, in peace time, provide an abundant supply of radioactive isotopes, which are now of great value not only in biophysical research but also in biochemistry and medicine.
These two disparate advances were important to the work of two Nobel Prize winners, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, who showed how the flow of sodium and potassium across the membranes of nerves can be coupled to produce the action potential, a brief electrical event that initiates the action potential, which propagates the nervous signal.