Biophysics turns the tools of physics on life, down to single molecules
Richard Feynman once imagined repair machines so tiny that a patient could swallow the doctor. That 1959 idea belongs to biophysics, the field that aims the methods of physics at living things, from individual molecules up to whole ecosystems. Karl Pearson gave the discipline its name in 1892.
Its roots go back to Luigi Galvani in the 18th century and to the Berlin school of physiologists in the 1840s, whose members included Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Heinrich Weber, Carl Ludwig and Johannes Müller. In the mid-20th century William T. Bovie, a pioneer of electrosurgery, helped drive it forward, and Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? stirred wider interest. The Biophysical Society, organised in 1957, now counts about 9,000 members worldwide.
Molecular biophysicists hunt for the physical basis of what biochemists study, such as how DNA, RNA and protein synthesis interact and how those interactions are controlled. Their toolkit includes X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, electron and atomic force microscopy, and small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering. Optical tweezers can grab single molecules and track forces and distances at the nanoscale, while statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and chemical kinetics help model complicated biological events as systems of interacting parts.
The field has spread well beyond molecules. Biophysical models are used heavily to study electrical conduction in single neurons and circuits across entire brains, and researchers increasingly apply physics and statistics to tissues, organs, populations and ecosystems, with topics ranging from bioelectronics to quantum biology. Medical physics, stretching from radiology to nanomedicine, is one branch, and many medical schools, mostly European ones, teach biophysics as a preclinical subject.
Not everyone is persuaded. Robert Rosen argued that the biophysical method overlooks what is specific about living phenomena. The discipline also often lacks a home of its own: many universities have no biophysics department, so its researchers are scattered across physics, chemistry, physiology, neuroscience, computer science and more. Plenty of its practitioners began their careers as biologists, chemists or physicists before crossing over.
Source: Biophysics
