Structural Biophysics

Understanding biological processes requires the use of physical concepts to assess the chemical and biochemical mechanisms of action in order to understand the properties of the molecular entities and their interactions and finally to correlate the molecular aspect with the biological functions and cellular activities. Biophysics is a field at the interface of biology, physics and chemistry / biochemistry aiming at describing and understanding biological processes. Biophysics is based on the use of advanced characterization techniques for structural and dynamic aspects of living matter. These techniques allow understanding the mechanisms during the interactions between biomolecular entities on a scale ranging from the size of an atom (atomic structure, assembly mechanisms, protein-protein, protein-DNA, protein-lipid interactions) to the mesoscopic size of complex cellular objects (ribosomes, organelles, large macromolecular buildings, etc.). The characterization techniques used in biophysics are, for many of them, still under methodological development. Great progress has been made over the last 10 years, for example in the field of electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, vibrational techniques or molecular modeling for assessing structural parameters of nanoscopic size. This school proposes to make an inventory of the latest technological advances. It provides a theoretical and practical training on the main techniques of structural biophysics.