Lesson 1
What is Biophysics?
Biophysics is a broad field incorporating chemistry, physics, biology, and many other fields to better understand how biological systems work.
Watch this video to see how other researchers define biophysics.
Read this page to see how biophysics is described by the Biophysical Society and about some of the subfields within biophysics.
To give you a better understanding of the breadth of biophysics research, symposia at last year's Biophysical Society Meeting (main presentations by leading biophysicists around the world) included:
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Single-molecule visualization of transcription, translation, and splicing
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Mapping the immune system
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Cytoskeleton and motility
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Mitochondrial calcium fluxes
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Anion channels
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Molecular motors
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Pharmaceutical biophysics
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Biophysical underpinnings of the origin of life
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Synthetic biology
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Neuron-glia interactions
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Membrane proteins in infectious disease
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Shapeshifting: proteins with more than one conformation
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Personalized medicine: protein sequence variation on human health
I don't expect you to understand what all of these mean, but I hope you can get a sense that biophysics covers and connects MANY areas of research.
Q1: What areas sound interesting to you? I challenge you to research a bit into one of these fields. One of the first things you should learn going into a science field is that google is your friend :) and great first step to gaining an understanding of something you have never heard of. The main source of gaining knowledge for a scientist is through peer-reviewed primary (original report of discovery) literature (articles in scientific journals). We will look at the various parts of scientific research articles in lessons to come.
The area that our lab specializes in is that of membrane proteins - proteins which reside in the cell membrane as can be seen in the image below.
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Read this journal article answering some common questions about biophysics.
Congratulations, you have read your first scientific journal article! You can see that many Nobel Prizes have been awarded relating to biophysics, and this does not include the recent cryo-EM revolution that has happened since this article was published in 2011 (we will discuss cryo-EM in the third module, or see this article if you are interested).
This article mentions several times the importance of physical or molecular interactions, and you will see that we will talk a lot about the role of different types of interactions throughout this tutorial (and is the topic of the next lesson!). The article points out that this interest in physical interactions is the difference between biochemistry and biophysics. Biochemistry is interested in what molecules interact, and biophysics is interested in how they interact. While this might be true, I don't think it is always necessary to put these kinds of labels on the research. I would call myself a biophysicist, a biochemist, and a chemist. Others might think of themselves as a physicist, engineer, and biologist. This is what drew me personally to the field of biophysics - the combination of so many different fields and skills in order to answer biologically relevant, important questions.
Q2: After reading this article what questions do you have about the field of biophysics?
Lastly, watch this video about a researcher combining biophysics, biology, physics, and engineering. I think his work is a good example of how biophysics spans many fields with the overarching goal of understanding biological processes and answering biological questions.
Assignment (Q3): Research a famous biophysicist and present their contribution to the field to the group (under 5 min, one or two slides using PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote, or another presentation software). See the resource Designing Presentations for more information. We will be giving short presentations throughout this tutorial as they are an excellent way to summarize information and see if you really understand the material. Scientific communication is also a very important skill to begin developing.
Hint: You could chose to research one of the Nobel laureates mentioned in the journal article (although be aware this is not a representation of all the types of amazing scientists conducting biophysics research), or you could look up one of the speakers chosen to give the BPS Lecture (the big, keynote presentation at the Biophysical Society Meeting every year).
In this first lesson we also would like to introduce growth mindset. Today was an introduction, but through this tutorial you will learn difficult concepts that you might struggle with. Reading scientific literature at first will feel like you are reading a different language. But each time you read an article you will learn more and get a little more out of it. Growth mindset focuses on using challenges and failures as opportunities for growth and learning. With each repetition you will incrementally learn more and more.
This mindset is especially important in scientific research. The majority of the time experiments do not work. Trust me, it can be frustrating, but determining why experiments don't work can give just as much information as experiments that do work.