| Topic |
Sub-topic |
| I |
PROCESSES |
| 1 |
Physical bases of the biochemical world. The molecular logic and fundamental characteristics of living matter. Production and consumption of energy in biological systems. Stationary state of biological systems. Flow of biological information. |
| 2 |
Principles of thermodynamics in biological systems. Energy, heat, work. First law. Entropy and living matter. Free energy and concentration. Chemical potential. High-energy phosphate compounds. |
| 3 |
Membrane transport. Fluid mosaic model. Significance of molecular movements in the membrane. Brownian diffusion and movement. Fick's law. General mechanisms of membrane transport. Thermodynamic model of the sodium pump. |
| 4 |
Transmission of energy at the membrane level. Translocation of protons and proton-motor force in electron transport chains. Chemiosmotic model. Coupling between electron transport chains and ATP synthesis. Examples of processes associated with the proton-motor force. |
| 5 |
Capture of light energy. Excitation of molecules by light. Pigments and photosystems. Electron transport in photosynthetic systems. Photophosphorylation. |
| 6 |
The eye as an optical instrument. General structure, poles and cones. Molecular bases of vision. Absorption and emission of light. Other applications of the rhodopsin system. |
| 7 |
Membrane potential. Excitable membranes. Action potential. The nervous impulse. Ion channels in nerve cell membranes. Synaptic transmission. |
| 8 |
Muscle contraction The muscle and its diversity. Organization of skeletal muscle. Contractile muscle proteins. Mechanism and regulation of muscle contraction. Muscle contraction energy. |
| 9 |
Cytoskeleton, cilia and flagella. Actin-dependent motor systems. Microtubule systems. Movement of cilia and flagella. Intracellular transport. Bacterial motility. |
| II |
TIME VARIATIONS |
| 10 |
Generalization of the second principle in open systems. Dissipation function. Phenomenological equations. Minimal entropy production principle. Stability of stationary states. Unbalanced processes. |
| 11 |
Deterministic analysis of systems. Kinetic processes as systems of differential equations. Stationary solutions. Lotka-Volterra model. Dynamics of systems. Structural stability and bifurcations. |
| 12 |
Biological oscillations. Self-organization in living things. Periodic behaviors in biological systems. Rhythms. Glycolysis oscillations. Rhythms of enzyme activity. Chaos |
| 13 |
Stochastic analysis of systems. Dynamics of a system through stochastic treatment. Markov chains. Simulation of stochastic processes. Monte Carlo Method. |
| 14 |
Evolution, an irreversible process. Prebiotic evolution. Modeling selection and evolution. Hypercycles. tRNA as fossils of prebiotic evolution. RNY hypothesis. |
| 15 |
Fluxes and forces in molecular evolution. Speed of evolution. Stochastic matrices of protein and gene evolution. Genomic distances. Models of molecular evolution. |
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