Lecture Notes

Week 1: Introduction (part 1; part 2; reductionism)

                Viscous, inertial and other forces (click here)

Week 2: Diffusion in the cell; FRAP; diffusion in external potential   

               (part 1; part 2)

               Java simulation of diffusion/FRAP: clouds.jar

Source code (uses OpenSource Physics)

Week 3: Use of FRAP to study association/dissociation kinetics in

               cells. (part 1)

               Introduction to actin and cell motion (part 2)

               FRAP studies of microtubule dynamics in the mitotic spindle

               (part 3)

Week 4: Diffusion to capture and diffusion-limited association

               (part 1)

               Bacterial Chemotaxis and motility (part 2)

Week 5: MinD/MinE oscillations and establishment of cell center  

               (part 1)

               Image analysis in studies of cell dynamics

Week 6: Robustness of protein circuits and cell patterns (part 1)

                Introduction to molecular motors, porters vs rowers

                and cooperativity of myosin in muscle (part 2)

Week 7: Force generation by polymerization (part 1)

Week 8: Mechanisms of microtubule polymerization.

               Background material: 1, 2, 3, 4

Week 9: Microtubule dynamic instability (click here)

Week 10: Guest lecture: Jian-Qiu Wu (Ohio State University):

                  "The Great Divide: Molecular Mechanism of

                    Cytokinesis in Fission Yeast"
Week 10: FCS, Biopolymers as Random Walks

Week 11:

Week 12: Electrostatics of the cell membrane

                 Guest lecture: Gillian Ryan (Dalhousie University)

Week 13: The cell membrane as an excitable medium:

                 The Hodgkin-Huxley model

                 Student presentations (part 1)

Week 14: Guest lecture: Kyoko Okada (Brandeis University)

                 Student presentations (part 2)