This book brings about the confluence of various concepts and tools to address significant problems of our time in physical biology and adjacent disciplines. The volume is structured to provide a broad perspective on current state-of-the-art methods and concepts at the heart of chemical and biological behavior, covering the topics of visualization; theory and computation for complexity; macromolecular function, protein folding, and protein misfolding; molecular recognition; and systems integration from cells to consciousness. The scope of tools is wide-ranging, spanning imaging, crystallography, microfluidics, single-molecule spectroscopy, and synthetic probe targeting, either molecular or by metallic particles. The perspectives are from the point of view of world leaders in physics, chemistry, and biology; and they define potential new frontiers at the interface of these disciplines, including physical, systems, and synthetic biology.

Contents:

• The Preoccupations of Twenty-First-Century Biology (D Baltimore)
• The World as Physics, Mathematics and Nothing Else (A Varshavsky)
• Physical Biology: 4D Visualization of Complexity (A H Zewail)
• Revolutionary Developments from Atomic to Extended Structural Imaging (J M Thomas)
• Physical Biology at the Crossroads (C Bustamante)
• The Challenge of Quasi-Regular Structures in Biology (R D Kornberg)
• The Future of Biological X-Ray Analysis (D C Rees)
• Reinterpreting the Genetic Code: Implications for Macromolecular Design, Evolution and Analysis (D A Tirrell)
• Designing Ligands to Bind Tightly to Proteins (G M Whitesides et al.)
• Biology by the Numbers (R Phillips)
• Eppur si muove (M Parrinello)
• Protein Folding and Beyond: Energy Landscapes and the Organization of Living Matter in Time and Space (P G Wolynes)
• Protein Folding and Misfolding: From Atoms to Organisms (C M Dobson)
• A Systems Approach to Medicine Will Transform Healthcare (L Hood)
• The Neurobiology of Consciousness (C Koch & F Mormann)
• Computer-Aided Drug Discovery: Physics-based Simulations from the Molecular to the Cellular Level (J A McCammom)
• Precision Measurements in Biology (S R Quake)
• Potassium Channels and the Atomic Basis of Selective Ion Conduction (R MacKinnon)
• Symmetry Breaking, Delocalization and Dynamics in Electron Transfer Systems (N S Hush)
• The Initial Value Representation of Semiclassical Theory: A Practical Way for Adding Quantum Effects to Classical Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Complex Molecular Systems (W H Miller)