Nonlinear excitations in biomolecules

[Nikola Nikolov]

byPeyrard, M. (ed.)

[en]

 The aim of the workshop entitled ''Nonlinear Excitations in Biomolecules'' is to attempt to bridge the gap between the physicists and biologists communities which is mainly due to language and cultural barriers. The progress of nonlinear science in the last few decades which have shown that the combination of nonlinearity, which characterize most biological phenomena, and cooperative effects in a system having a large number of degrees of freedom, can give rise to coherent excitations with remarkable properties. New concepts, such as solitons nd nonlinear energy localisation have become familiar to physicists and applied mathematicians. It is thus tempting to make an analogy between these coherent excitations and the exceptional stability of some biological processes, such as for instance DNA transcription, which require the coordination of many events in the ever changing environment of a cell. Physicists are now invoking nonlinear excitations to describe and explain many bio-molecular processes while biologists often doubt that the seemingly infinite variety of phenomena that they are attempting to classify can be reduced to such simple concepts. A large part of the meeting is devoted to tutorial lectures rather than to latest research results. The book provides a pedagogical introduction to the two topics forming the backbone of the meeting: the theory of nonlinear excitations and solitons, and their application in biology; and the structure and function of biomole and the structure and function of biomolecules, as well as energy and charge transport in biophysics. In order to emphasize the link between physics and biology, the volume is not divided along these two topics but according to biological subjects. Each chapter starts with a short introduction attempting to help the reader to find his way among the contributions and point out the connection between them. 23 lectures over the 32 presented have been selected and refers to quantum properties of macro-molecules. (J.S.)