Background physical biology programmes

The rapid advances in life sciences and physics and their potential impact on society constitute a challenge to both bioscientists and physicists. The structures and processes in living organisms have become accessible to physicists due to the recent developments in, especially, molecular biology and biochemistry which allow a high degree of control of those systems. A variety of biological systems have become sufficiently well-characterised to enable physicists to explore the physical concepts which govern the functioning of those systems. Studying the structures and processes in living organisms with the methods of physics will probably deepen the understanding of biological phenomena, and, equally important, the richness of biological structures and processes may act as a source of inspiration for new concepts in physics, novel materials and new instrumentation.