This book provides new structural, biochemical, and clinical information on ABC transporters. The authors explore and describe the state of the art of research, knowledge, and prospects for the future for this important family of proteins. The first ABC transporter was discovered in 1973 and was named P-glycoprotein. It elicits resistance to cytotoxic drugs, chiefly in human tumours, within which chemotherapy failure is observed in about 50% of cases. Together with its complex pharmacology, and even a suspected role in Alzheimer's disease, this ABC transporter still eludes a clinical solution to its multidrug resistance property. ABC transporters are integral membrane active proteins and they belong to one of the largest protein families across all species. Their myriad roles encompass the import or export of a diverse range of allocrites, including ion, nutrients, peptides, polysaccharides, lipids, and xenobiotics. They are of major medical importance with many members elaborating multidrug resistance in bacteria, fungi, yeast, parasites, and humans. Other ABC transporters are involved in a number of inherited diseases, including cystic fibrosis, macular degeneration, gout, and several other metabolic disorders

This book describes a new family of bio-polymer gels made from cytoskeletal proteins - actin, microtubule, and tropomyosin. The importance of the gel state with multi-scale hierarchical structure is emphasized to utilize emergent functions in living organisms. Detailed protocol of gel preparation, specified method of structure investigation, and dynamic studies of self-organization, self-healing, synchronized oscillating, and autonomous motility functions are introduced together with biomimetic functions of synthetic hydrogels.

These proceedings comprise invited and contributed papers presented at PLMMP-2014, addressing modern problems in the fields of liquids, solutions and confined systems, critical phenomena, as well as colloidal and biological systems. The book focuses on state-of-the-art developments in contemporary physics of liquid matter. The papers presented here are organized into four parts: (i) structure of liquids in confined systems, (ii) phase transitions, supercritical liquids and glasses, (iii) colloids, and (iv) medical and biological aspects and cover the most recent developments in the broader field of liquid state including interdisciplinary problems.

This book describes the unique characean experimental system, which provides a simplified model for many aspects of the physiology, transport and electrophysiology of higher plants. The first chapter offers a thorough grounding in the morphology, taxonomy and ecology of Characeae plants. Research on characean detached cells in steady state is summarised in Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 covers characean detached cells subjected to calibrated and mostly abiotic types of stress: touch, wounding, voltage clamp to depolarised and hyperpolarised potential difference levels, osmotic and saline stress. Chapter 4 highlights cytoplasmic streaming, cell-to-cell transport, gravitropism, cell walls and the role of Characeae in phytoremediation. The book is intended for researchers and students using the characean system and will also serve as an invaluable reference resource for electrophysiologists working on higher plants.

This book provides a premier resource on understanding the ribosome's essential nature and how it interacts with other proteins and nucleic acids to control protein synthesis. As one of the central foundations in our understanding of the biology at the molecular level, this topic appeals to a wide audience, from bench researcher to clinician. With the advent of atomic scale structures, methods to visualize and separate individual molecules, and the computational power to model the complex interactions of over a million atoms at once, our understanding of how gene expression is controlled at the level of protein translation is now deeply ensconced in the biophysical realm."

This book describes the design, development, characterisation and application of two novel fluorescence imaging instruments based on spectrally resolved detector arrays (SRDAs). The simplest SRDA is the standard colour camera, which integrates a Bayer filter array of red, green and blue colour filters to replicate the colour sensing capability of the human eye. The SRDAs used in this book contain many more colours, ranging from 16 to over 100 colour channels. Using these compact, robust and low-cost detectors for biomedical applications opens new avenues of exploration that were not possible before, in particular, the use of spectral imaging in endoscopy. The work presented shows for the first time that not only can this new type of camera be used for fluorescence imaging, but also that it is able to resolve signals from up to 7 different dyes - a level of multiplexing not previously achieved in tissue with such compact and robust equipment. Furthermore, it reports the application of a bimodal endoscope performing both reflectance and fluorescence imaging using these cameras in an ex vivo pig oesophagus model.

This book addresses two fundamental issues of motor control for both humans and robots: kinematic redundancy and the posture/movement problem. It blends traditional robotic constrained-optimal approaches with neuroscientific and evidence-based principles, proposing a "Task-space Separation Principle," a novel scheme for planning both posture and movement in redundant manipulators. The proposed framework is first tested in simulation and then compared with experimental motor strategies displayed by humans during redundant pointing tasks. The book also shows how this model builds on and expands traditional formulations such as the Passive Motion Paradigm and the Equilibrium Point Theory. Lastly, breaking with the neuroscientific tradition of planar movements and linear(ized) kinematics, the theoretical formulation and experimental scenarios are set in the nonlinear space of 3D rotations which are essential for wrist motions, a somewhat neglected area despite its importance in daily tasks.

The application of methodological approaches and mathematical formalisms proper to Physics and Engineering to investigate and describe biological processes and design biological structures has led to the development of many disciplines in the context of computational biology and biotechnology. The best known applicative domain is tissue engineering and its branches. Recent domains of interest are in the field of biophysics, e.g.: multiscale mechanics of biological membranes and films and filaments; multiscale mechanics of adhesion; biomolecular motors and force generation.

Modern hypotheses, models, and tools are currently emerging and resulting from the convergence of the methods and phylosophycal apporaches of the different research areas and disciplines. All these emerging approaches share the purpose of disentangling the complexity of organisms, tissues, and cells and mimiking the function of living systems.

The contributions presented in this book are current research highlights of six challenging and representative applicative domains of phyisical, engineering, and computational approaches in medicine and biology, i.e tissue engineering, modelling of molecular structures, cell mechanics and cell adhesion processes, cancer physics, and physico-chemical processes of metabolic interactions. Each chapter presents a compendium or a review of the original results achieved by authors in the last years. Furthermore, the book also wants to pinpoint the questions that are still open and that could propel the future research.

EPR of Free Radicals in Solids: Trends in Methods and Applications, 2nd ed. presents a critical two volume review of the methods and applications of EPR (ESR) for the study of free radical processes in solids. Emphasis is on the progress made in the developments in EPR technology, in the application of sophisticated matrix isolation techniques and in the advancement in quantitative EPR that have occurred since the 1st edition was published. Improvements have been made also at theoretical level, with the development of methods based on first principles and their application to the calculation of magnetic properties as well as in spectral simulations. EPR of Free Radicals in Solids II focuses on the trends in applications of experimental and theoretical methods to extract structural and dynamical properties of radicals and spin probes in solid matrices by continuous wave (CW) and pulsed techniques in nine chapters written by experts in the field. It examines the studies involving radiation- and photo-induced inorganic and organic radicals in inert matrices, the high-spin molecules and metal-based molecular clusters as well as the radical pro-cesses in photosynthesis. Recent advancements in environmental applications in-cluding measurements by myon resonance of radicals on surfaces and by quantitative EPR in dosimetry are outlined and the applications of optical detection in material research with much increased sensitivity reviewed. The potential use of EPR in quantum computing is considered in a newly written chapter. This new edition is aimed to experimentalists and theoreticians in research involving free radicals, as well as for students of advanced courses in physical chemis-try, chemical physics, materials science, biophysics, biochemistry and related fields.

This book provides an introduction to design of biomedical optical imaging technologies and their applications. The main topics include: fluorescence imaging, confocal imaging, micro-endoscope, polarization imaging, hyperspectral imaging, OCT imaging, multimodal imaging and spectroscopic systems.

Each chapter is written by the world leaders of the respective fields, and will cover:

principles and limitations of optical imaging technology, system design and practical implementation for one or two specific applications, including design guidelines, system configuration, optical design, component requirements and selection, system optimization and design examples, recent advances and applications in biomedical researches and clinical imaging.

This book serves as a reference for students and researchers in optics and biomedical engineering.

After an insightful introductory part on recent developments in the thermodynamics of small systems, the author presents his contribution to a long-standing problem, namely the connection between irreversibility and dissipation. He develops a method based on recent results on fluctuation theorems that is able to estimate dissipation using only information acquired in a single, sufficiently long, trajectory of a stationary nonequilibrium process. This part ends with a remarkable application of the method to the analysis of biological data, in this case, the fluctuations of a hair bundle.

The third part studies the energetics of systems that undergo symmetry breaking transitions. These theoretical ideas lead to, among other things, an experimental realization of a Szilard engine using manipulated colloids.

This work has the potential for important applications ranging from the analysis of biological media to the design of novel artificial nano-machines.

This thesis addresses fundamental scientific questions such as: How are complex natural products synthesized in vivo? Can we replicate these conditions in a laboratory environment? What is the biological function of such secondary metabolites? What are the biological origins of chirality? These issues are explored in an accessible manner using a multidisciplinary approach spanning chemistry, biology and physics to investigate an interesting family of complex natural products isolated from marine molluscs - the tridachiahydropyrones. The work has achieved: Elegant biomimetic syntheses of a number of the tridachiahydropyrone compounds in vitro using organic synthesis techniques The characterization of the interactions between these compounds and a range of model membrane systems using a series of fluorescence spectroscopic studies The investigation of the antioxidant and photoprotective properties of the compounds by means of biophysical assay techniques The synthesis of tridachiahydropyrone utilizing the model membrane systems as biomimetic reaction media.

This book presents the fundamental physics of optical interferometry as applied to biophysical, biological and medical research. Interference is at the core of many types of optical detection and is a powerful probe of cellular and tissue structure in interfererence microscopy and in optical coherence tomography. It is also the root cause of speckle and other imaging artefacts that limit range and resolution. For biosensor applications, the inherent sensitivity of interferometry enables ultrasensitive detection of molecules in biological samples for medical diagnostics. In this book, emphasis is placed on the physics of light scattering, beginning with the molecular origins of refraction as light propagates through matter, and then treating the stochastic nature of random fields that ultimately dominate optical imaging in cells and tissue. The physics of partial coherence plays a central role in the text, with a focus on coherence detection techniques that allow information to be selectively detected out of incoherent and heterogeneous backgrounds. Optical Interferometry for Biology and Medicine is divided into four sections. The first covers fundamental principles, and the next three move up successive scales, beginning with molecular interferometry (biosensors), moving to cellular interferometry (microscopy), and ending with tissue interferometry (biomedical). An outstanding feature of the book is the clear presentation of the physics, with easy derivations of the appropriate equations, while emphasizing "rules of thumb" that can be applied by experimental researchers to give semi-quantitative predictions.

This monograph presents the latest results related to bio-mechanical systems and materials. The bio-mechanical systems with which his book is concerned are prostheses, implants, medical operation robots and muscular re-training systems. To characterize and design such systems, a multi-disciplinary approach is required which involves the classical disciplines of mechanical/materials engineering and biology and medicine. The challenge in such an approach is that views, concepts or even language are sometimes different from discipline to discipline and the interaction and communication of the scientists must be first developed and adjusted. Within the context of materials' science, the book covers the interaction of materials with mechanical systems, their description as a mechanical system or their mechanical properties.

The volumes in this authoritative series present a multidisciplinary approach to modeling and simulation of flows in the cardiovascular and ventilatory systems, especially multiscale modeling and coupled simulations. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems are tightly coupled, as their primary function is to supply oxygen to and remove carbon dioxide from the body's cells. Because physiological conduits have deformable and reactive walls, macroscopic flow behavior and prediction must be coupled to nano- and microscopic events in a corrector scheme of regulated mechanisms when the vessel lumen caliber varies markedly. Therefore, investigation of flows of blood and air in physiological conduits requires an understanding of the biology, chemistry, and physics of these systems together with the mathematical tools to describe their functioning.
Volume 3 is devoted to the set of mediators of the cell surface, especially ion and molecular carriers and catalytic receptors that, once liganded and activated, initiate signal transduction pathways. Intracellular cascades of chemical reactions trigger the release of substances stored in cellular organelles and/or gene transcription and protein synthesis. Primary mediators are included in models of regulated cellular processes, but multiple secondary signaling components are discarded to allow simple, representative modeling and to manage their inverse problems.

This book deals with the new method of laser-driven acceleration for application to radiation biophysics and medicine. It provides multidisciplinary contributions from world leading scientist in order to assess the state of the art of innovative tools for radiation biology research and medical applications of ionizing radiation. The book contains insightful contributions on highly topical aspects of spatio-temporal radiation biophysics, evolving over several orders of magnitude, typically from femtosecond and sub-micrometer scales. Particular attention is devoted to the emerging technology of laser-driven particle accelerators and their application to spatio-temporal radiation biology and medical physics, customization of non-conventional and selective radiotherapy and optimized radioprotection protocols.

The first part of the book provides a pedagogical introduction to the physics of complex systems driven far from equilibrium. In this part we discuss the basic concepts and theoretical techniques which are commonly used to study classical stochastic transport in systems of interacting driven particles. The analytical techniques include mean-field theories, matrix product ansatz, renormalization group, etc. and the numerical methods are mostly based on computer simulations. In the second part of the book these concepts and techniques are applied not only to vehicular traffic but also to transport and traffic-like phenomena in living systems ranging from collective movements of social insects (for example, ants) on trails to intracellular molecular motor transport. These demonstrate the conceptual unity of the fundamental principles underlying the apparent diversity of the systems and the utility of the theoretical toolbox of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics in interdisciplinary research far beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of physics.

The book is based on lectures presented on the International Summer School on Biophysics held in Croatia in September 2009. The advantage of the School is that it provides advanced training in very broad scope of areas related to biophysics contrary to other similar schools or workshops that are centered mainly on one topic or technique. In this volume, tenth in the row, the papers in the field of biophysics are presented. The topics are biological phenomena from single protein to macromolecular aggregations structure by using variant physical methods (NMR, EPR, FTIR, Mass Spectrometry, etc.). The interrelationship of supramolecular structures and their functions is enlightened by applications of principals of these physical methods in the biophysical and molecular biology context.

"Morphology Genetic Materials Templated from Nature Species" provides a comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of research on bio-inspired functional materials including materials science and engineering aspects of the fabrication, properties, and applications. The book discusses bio-inspired strategies integrating biotemplate, biomineralization, and biomimesis in nature, which are adopted to fabricate functional materials with hierarchical bio-architectures and interrelated outstanding performances, as well as valuable applications in photoelectricity, photonics, photocatalysis, chemical detection, bio-imaging, and photoelectron transfer components/devices.

The book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of materials science, chemistry, nanotechnology, semiconductor, biotechnology, environmental engineering, etc.

Prof. Dr. Di Zhang is currently a professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the director of the State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, China.

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With the aim of providing a deeper insight into possible mechanisms of biological self-organization, this thesis presents new approaches to describe the process of self-assembly and the impact of spatial organization on the function of membrane proteins, from a statistical physics point of view. It focuses on three important scenarios: the assembly of membrane proteins, the collective response of mechanosensitive channels and the function of the twin arginine translocation (Tat) system. Using methods from equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, general conclusions were drawn that demonstrate the importance of the protein-protein interactions. Namely, in the first part a general aggregation dynamics model is formulated, and used to show that fragmentation crucially affects the efficiency of the self-assembly process of proteins. In the second part, by mapping the membrane-mediated forces into a simplified many-body system, the dynamic and equilibrium behaviour of interacting mechanosensitive channels is derived, showing that protein agglomeration strongly impacts its desired function. The final part develops a model that incorporates both the agglomeration and transport function of the Tat system, thereby providing a comprehensive description of this self-organizing process.

Evolutionary biomechanics is the study of evolution through the analysis of biomechanical systems. Its unique advantage is the precision with which physical constraints and performance can be predicted from first principles. Instead of reviewing the entire breadth of the biomechanical literature, a few key examples are explored in depth as vehicles for discussing fundamental concepts, analytical techniques, and evolutionary theory. Each chapter develops a conceptual theme, developing the underlying theory and techniques required for analyses in evolutionary biomechanics. Examples from terrestrial biomechanics, metabolic scaling, and bird flight are used to analyse how physics constrains the design space that natural selection is free to explore, and how adaptive evolution finds solutions to the trade-offs between multiple complex conflicting performance objectives. Evolutionary Biomechanics is suitable for graduate level students and professional researchers in the fields of biomechanics, physiology, evolutionary biology and palaeontology. It will also be of relevance and use to researchers in the physical sciences and engineering.

The book is divided in 4 parts. In the first one, the importance of the analysis of the cardiac dynamics using the ambulatory monitoring technique is presented. The second part contains the description of foundations of impedance cardiography (ICG), the models used to describe the ICG technique and the description of available systems for ambulatory monitoring of cardiac hemodynamics. The third part is devoted to the validation of the ambulatory ICG method, the verification of the quality of long term ICG recordings and the discussion of the limitations of this technique. In the last part, some clinical and research applications of the ICG ambulatory monitoring are presented. The simultaneous recordings of electrocardiogram (ECG) and ICG in the transient cardiac arrhythmia events illustrate the potential applications of that method for quantitative analysis of hemodynamics when the implementation of the stationary methods would be either difficult or not possible to do. The book is followed by references, alphabetical index and appendices containing the technical data of the available systems for portable monitoring of cardiac hemodynamics.

This book reports the majority of lectures given during the NATO Advanced Study Institute ASI-982996, which was held at the European Scientific Institute of Archamps (ESI, Archamps - France) from November 15 to November 27, 2007. The ASI course was structured in two parts: the first was dedicated to what is often called "teletherapy", i. e. radiotherapy with external beams, while the second focused on internal radiotherapy, also called "brachytherapy" or "curietherapy" in honour of Madame Curie who initiated the technique about a century ago. This ASI took place after the European School of Medical Physics, which devoted a 3 week period to medical imaging, a subject complementary to the topics of this book. Courses devoted to nuclear medicine and digital imaging techniques are collected in two volumes of the NATO Science Series entitled "Physics for Medical Imaging Applications" (ISBN 978-1-4020-5650-5) and "Molecular imaging: computer reconstruction and practice" (ISBN 978-1-4020- 8751-6). Every year in autumn ESI organises the European School of Medical Physics, which covers a large spectrum of topics ranging from Medical Imaging to Radiotherapy, over a period of 5 weeks. Thanks to the Cooperative Science and Technology sub-programme of the NATO Science Division, weeks four and five were replaced this year by the ASI course dedicated to "Physics of Modern Radiotherapy & Brachytherapy". This allowed the participation of experts and students from 20 different countries, with diverse cultural background and p- fessional experience.

This book addresses the possibilities and challenges in mimicking biological membranes and creating membrane-based sensor and separation devices. Recent advances in developing biomimetic membranes for technological applications will be presented with focus on the use of integral membrane protein mediated transport for sensing and separation. It describes the fundamentals of biosensing as well as separation and shows how the two processes are working in a cooperative manner in biological systems. Biomimetics is a truly cross-disciplinary approach and this is exemplified using the process of forward osmosis will be presented as an illustration of how advances in membrane technology may be directly stimulated by an increased understanding of biological membrane transport. In the development of a biomimetic sensor/separation technology, both channels (ion and water channels) and carriers (transporters) are important. An ideal sensor/separation device requires the supporting biomimetic matrix to be virtually impermeable to anything but the solute in question. In practice, however, a biomimetic support matrix will generally have finite permeabilities to water, electrolytes, and non-electrolytes. These non-protein mediated membrane transport contributions will be presented and the implications for biomimetic device construction will be discussed. New developments in our understanding of the reciprocal coupling between the material properties of the biomimetic matrix and the embedded proteins will be presented and strategies for inducing biomimetic matrix stability will be discussed. Once reconstituted in its final host biomimetic matrix the protein stability also needs to be maintained and controlled. Beta-barrel proteins exemplified by the E. Coli outer membrane channels or small peptides are inherently more stable than alpha-helical bundle proteins which may require additional stabilizing modifications. The challenges associated with insertion and stabilization of alpha-helical bundle proteins including many carriers and ligand and voltage gated ion (and water) channels will be discussed and exemplified using the aquaporin protein. Many biomimetic membrane applications require that the final device can be used in the macroscopic realm. Thus a biomimetic separation device must have the ability to process hundred of liters of permeate in hours - effectively demanding square-meter size membranes. Scalability is a general issue for all nano-inspired technology developments and will be addressed here in the context biomimetic membrane array fabrication. Finally a robust working biomimetic device based on membrane transport must be encapsulated and protected yet allowing massive transport though the encapsulation material. This challenge will be discussed using microfluidic design strategies as examples of how to use microfluidic systems to create and encapsulate biomimetic membranes. The book provides an overview of what is known in the field, where additional research is needed, and where the field is heading.

Increasing interest in mitochondrial bioenergetics is being driven by the impact of drug and environmental chemical-induced disturbances of mitochondrial function as well as hereditary deficiencies and the progressive deterioration of bioenergetic performance with age. These initiatives have fostered the investigation of genetic and environmental influences on bioenergetics. In Mitochondrial Bioenergetics: Methods and Protocols, researchers in the field detail the practical principles and assays designed to derive quantitative assessment of each set of parameters that reflect different aspects of mitochondrial bioenergetics. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology (TM) series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and key tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls Authoritative and practical, Mitochondrial Bioenergetics: Methods and Protocols helps elevate the quality and rate of investigative discoveries regarding disease states associated with environmental or genetic influences on mitochondrial bioenergetics.