The exercises will be held in the tradition of the former “Biophysics seminar”: this means that the participants will give talks on topics of modern biophysical research.

Preparation:

-literature search

-consideration of at least one English original paper, not older than published in 2000

-talk has to be in final form and to be delivered to me at least ONE WEEK in advance, NO EXCEPTIONS!

Place and time: room 220, thursdays 11.00 h, the next seminars will be given as in the following table:

List of topics:

1) optical traps and tweezers as tools in biophysics

2) protein folding and furnishing

3) molecular motors working in cells

4) modern fluorescence microscopy techniques (confocal, multi-photon..)

5) high resolution microscpies (nearfield scanning microscopy)

6) biophysics on the single-molecule level

7) Structure and function of the light sensitive receptor rhodopsin (protein structure I)

8) lipid vesicle shapes and energetics

9) Structural basis of Prion diseases (protein structure II)

10) DNA and RNA forms and phases (NA structure)

11) channels, measurements of their function

12) Biological membrane models, diffusion und its measurement

13) concept of lipid raft in living cells (rafts I)

14) physical properties of artificial lipid raft systems (rafts II)

15) components and basic physical properties of the cytoskeleton

16) self assembly, lipid phases and the effect of curvature (lipid phase behavior I)

17) Benjamin Franklin found molecular monolayers, a playground for (bio)physicists (lipid phase behavior II)

18) Bacterial S-layer proteins: structure and application

19) Mechanics of cells

20) Pattern formation in biology (Given by T. Fuhs on Oct 17^th)

Further suggestion welcome!

A further remark: the seminar language is – for pedagogical reasons – ENGLISH. This makes life easier since the relevant literature can be obtained in English only.

This is the same rule as for the lecture in Methods of Biophysics.

Questions/comments?

Dr. Carsten Selle, email: selle@physik.uni-leipzig.de