Bio Numbers

Course given on fall semester by Ron Milo, teaching fellows: Lior Greenspoon, Sam Lovat and Liad Ben-Uri.

Mondays 11:15-13:00 @ Botnar auditorium

Course materials (exercises etc) can be found on our Moodle website.

Course email (to send suggestions, errors, insights...): cellbiologybythenumbers@gmail.com

 

 

Main reading resource: "Cell Biology by the Numbers" book

Vignettes that reveal how numbers serve as a sixth sense in understanding so much about the world - from the logic of cells in our body to our impact on Nature

Course outline

  • Subject 1: Quantitative reasoning in molecular and cell biology
  • Subject 2: Size and mass
  • Subject 3 : Concentration and absolute numbers
  • Subject 4: Rates
  • Subject 5: Energy, food and humanity
  • Subject 6: Mutations and evolution

Course description and syllabus

Over the past decades, biology and environmental studies have evolved rapidly from descriptive, qualitative disciplines to more analytical, data-driven and quantitative fields. Our ability to collect numbers that describe the most basic processes around us has increased significantly, and simple calculations based on these data can provide important insights and enrich our scientific intuition.

This course is aimed at exposing students to the practice of making back of the envelope calculations (so called Fermi problems) with key numbers from the fields of biology and sustainability, and its useful applications in research. We will learn how to identify the major factors that determine the order of magnitude of the results, when to allow simplification, how to calculate them efficiently, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

The course is composed of weekly lectures on different aspects of quantitative cell biology and sustainability through many examples of basic (yet often surprising) questions:

  • Size and geometry (e.g. What is larger, mRNA or the protein it codes for? How many cells are there in a human?)
  • Concentrations and absolute numbers (e.g. What is the elemental and macromolecular composition of a cell? How many virions result from a single viral infection?)
  • Energies and Forces (e.g. What is the power consumption of a cell? How much does protein synthesis take out of the entire energy budget of a cell?)
  • Rates and durations (e.g. How long does it take cells to copy their genomes? What is faster, transcription or translation? What are the time scales for diffusion in cells?)
  • Information and errors (e.g. What is the mutation rate during genome replication? What is the error rate in transcription and translation?)

The last few meetings of the course will be dedicated to presentations of student calculations as a final assignment.

Accompanying texts

Course book is freely available at: bionumbers

Specific reading material will be given during the course.

* Those who did not take a molecular biology course should read the first few chapters of "Essential Cell Biology", Alberts et al, Garland Science

Other recommended readings (none compulsory, all for enrichment and fun):

  • “Physical Biology of the Cell” by Rob Phillips, Jane Kondev, Julie Theriot and Hernan Garcia
  • “Physiology by Numbers” by Richard Burton (and its partner book “Biology by Numbers” also by Richard Burton)
  • “Consider a Spherical Cow” by John Harte (and its partner book “Consider a Cyclindrical Cow” also by John Harte)
  • “Guesstimation” by Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam
  • "Street fighting mathmatics" by Sanjoy Mahajan
  • "The Best of Times, The Worst of Times" by Paul Behrens
  • Our World in Data
  • "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling

Grading

Attendance and active participation is required.

50% - Weekly assignments

50% - Final assignment (presentation + written vignette)

Interesting links