Preface
We, human beings are member of living organisms on the earth and more or less
interested in biology. It is important to study and understand living organisms on the
earth from physical view point because origin and evolution of them are closely
related to physical principle. Energy is a keyword for physical process in chemical
and Darwinian evolutions. Energy is required to escape from equilibrium state and
maintain stationary state of life. We focus on biomembranes and cells because cells
are essential unit of the living organisms and the cell is composed of various
biomembranes. The biomembranes play important roles in integrated system of
chemical reactions in the cell because the great many chemical reactions are
compartmented and regulated by biomembranes in the cell. Structure and various
movements of the cell are related with energy-consuming process. The cell is a
system of processing information in signaling system. The system is closely related
with various functions such as response to hormone or neurotransmitter through
receptor and malfunction inducing oncogenesis. There are a number of techniques
that have been introduced and further tailored to the studies in this field (e.g.,
combination of the fluorescence microscopy and optical trapping technique/atomic
force microscopy). In this book only the optical trapping technique is explained,
because it plays a central role in the study on the function of motor proteins. Readers
should refer to a number of excellent reviews for other developments.
In Chap. 7, biological movements and their molecular mechanisms are described.
The background of the researches who are interested in the biological motion has
become so diverse that it was not possible to cover the whole area by a single author.
Hence, basic knowledges about muscle contraction and cell motility are described in
this chapter. There are many cell biology books dealing with this topic, but in the
author’s opinion, the physical aspect of the phenomenon has not been sufficiently
described in those publications. Nowadays, more and more cell biological phenomena have been described and analyzed in the methodology and approach, which have
been developed in the field of physics and related fields. The author has been
interested in the biological motion, in which the alteration of the filamentous
structure leads to the cell shape change this type of motion does not depend on the
v
We, human beings are member of living organisms on the earth and more or less
interested in biology. It is important to study and understand living organisms on the
earth from physical view point because origin and evolution of them are closely
related to physical principle. Energy is a keyword for physical process in chemical
and Darwinian evolutions. Energy is required to escape from equilibrium state and
maintain stationary state of life. We focus on biomembranes and cells because cells
are essential unit of the living organisms and the cell is composed of various
biomembranes. The biomembranes play important roles in integrated system of
chemical reactions in the cell because the great many chemical reactions are
compartmented and regulated by biomembranes in the cell. Structure and various
movements of the cell are related with energy-consuming process. The cell is a
system of processing information in signaling system. The system is closely related
with various functions such as response to hormone or neurotransmitter through
receptor and malfunction inducing oncogenesis. There are a number of techniques
that have been introduced and further tailored to the studies in this field (e.g.,
combination of the fluorescence microscopy and optical trapping technique/atomic
force microscopy). In this book only the optical trapping technique is explained,
because it plays a central role in the study on the function of motor proteins. Readers
should refer to a number of excellent reviews for other developments.
In Chap. 7, biological movements and their molecular mechanisms are described.
The background of the researches who are interested in the biological motion has
become so diverse that it was not possible to cover the whole area by a single author.
Hence, basic knowledges about muscle contraction and cell motility are described in
this chapter. There are many cell biology books dealing with this topic, but in the
author’s opinion, the physical aspect of the phenomenon has not been sufficiently
described in those publications. Nowadays, more and more cell biological phenomena have been described and analyzed in the methodology and approach, which have
been developed in the field of physics and related fields. The author has been
interested in the biological motion, in which the alteration of the filamentous
structure leads to the cell shape change this type of motion does not depend on the
v