Dr. Armin Kargol has published a book titled "Introduction to Cellular Biophysics. Part I: Membrane Transport Mechanisms". It is intended as a textbook for an undergraduate course in Cellular Biophysics and is based on a course Dr. Kargol developed for the Biophysics major at Loyola.
While the cells are studied by different sciences, they are seen differently by biologists, chemists, or physicists. Biologists concentrate their attention on cell structure and function. What does the cell consist of? Where are its organelles? What function does each organelle fulfil? From a chemists' point of view, a cell is a complex chemical reaction chamber where various molecules are synthesized or degraded. The main question is how these, sometimes very complicated chains of reactions are controlled. Finally, from a physics standpoint, one of the main questions is the physical movement of all these molecules between organelles within the cell, as well as their exchange with the extracellular medium. The aim of this book is to look into the basic physical phenomena occurring in cells. These physical transport processes facilitate chemical reactions in the cell and that in turn leads to the biological functions necessary for the cell to satisfy its role in the mother organism.
The first part of this two-volume series has been published by Morgan and Claypool in ebook and print formats: click here. Part I is an inventory of physical transport processes occurring in cells while the second volume, titled "From membrane transport to neural signaling" and to be published later this year, will be a closer look at how complex biological and physiological cell phenomena result from these very basic physical processes.