Physical biology of the cell, by Rob Phillips, Jane Kondev and Julie Theriot

This book defies easy categorization. It is neither exactly a textbook, a book of problems for solving whereby someone could teach themselves, nor an attempt to argue or present a specific new philosophy about how to do biological science. It is something of all these things, and so reflects its origins in courses given by the authors at their universities. It is a curious amalgam of examples of how to do quantitative estimation and modelling, introduced with some biochemical and cell biological background and peppered with reminders about mathematical tricks or bases for calculation and problems for solving by the reader – to which solutions are not provided, but can be obtained on request by accredited instructors. There is an attractive website associated with this book that includes errata, electronic copies of its figures, hints for problem solving and additional movies. This book is divided into four parts: The Facts of Life, Life at Rest, Life in Motion and The Meaning of Life. The first lays the ground by surveying some aspects of cell biology and biochemistry, the rest talks about its quantification and integration into holistic mechanical and mathematical models of specific phenomena. Physical Biology of the Cell serves a useful purpose in promoting the physical and mathematical appreciation for what biologists observe. For example, the forces exerted by DNA when packaged within a viral capsid, the energy requirements for fusion or fission of lipid membranes and their dependence on scale, and the spring-like or beam-like properties of biological structures at all scales, are systematically laid out. Scientists sometimes forget in the excitement of discovery and success that they can only express themselves analogically, in models. And the point is, that the modelling we undertake, and our appreciation of what it is feasible to think given the data available, relies on a realistic appreciation of the constraints in play – the physical nature of biology. This book begins with some chapters of background – providing a primer on protein structure, for example, and the central dogma of DNA4RNA4protein. A slightly odd aspect of this is the uneven level of detail provided, and the diffuse way in which a particular area can end up being presented. For example, the Lac operon is addressed several times, at increasing levels of detail and quantification. This makes sense in a way because the aim of the authors is to talk about the underlying physical biology common to quite different specific examples (as they explain in their Preface). Particularly in the closing pages of this book, the authors seek to further justify this on the basis that one needs always to simplify to some extent in order to make something modelable or easily quantifiable. I can see that, but the unevenness with which detail is given is odd. Introns are mentioned on p. 149 without being previously defined in the text, the index entry for introns refers one to p. 685, and that refers one back to p. 163, where introns are mentioned in the context of one of the problems at the end of Chapter 4 (Who: Bless the Little Beasties) – which I guess not every reader will have attempted. The ribosome is