Biophysics

Introduction to virus biophysics

December 10, 2011.

Lecturer

Dr. ANTONIO ŠIBER
Institute of Physics, Zagreb

Date and time

Monday, December 20, 2011 at 3:30 p.m.

Location

Lecture Hall, Wing I, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Bijenička 54, Zagreb

Abstract

Viruses are functional complexes of nucleic acids and proteins and although they are rarely considered as parts of the living world, they belong to it because their function and “meaning” are realized only within a living cell. Outside the cell, viruses can be viewed as independent physical systems whose stability is determined by interactions typical of biophysical systems (van der Waals, electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic “interactions”, …). Viruses are therefore a well-defined and relatively simple system suitable as a prototype for studies of interactions in “living matter”. The lecture will be a concise overview of the physics of viruses. This is a field of research that has been developing intensively in the last ten years, although its history is longer than sixty years (see, for example, Ernest C. Pollard, The physics of viruses, Academic Press Inc., New York, 1953).

*Seminar of the Croatian Biophysical Society

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