A two-volume physiology text written for senior undergraduate and graduate students developed from Weiss's course notes teaching bioelectrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first volume on transport develops the principal mechanisms by which matter is transported across cellular membranes, describing the homeostatic mechanisms allowing cells to maintain solutes, volume, and potential. The second volume details electrically inexcitable cells as well as electrically excitable cells such as neurons and muscle cells, including lumped-parameter and distributed parameter models, the Hodgkin-Huxley model, and voltage- gated ion channels. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Cellular Biophysics is a quantitatively oriented basic physiology text for seniorundergraduate and graduate students in bioengineering, biophysics, physiology, and neuroscienceprograms. It will also serve as a major reference work for biophysicists.Developed from the author'snotes for a course that he has taught at MIT for many years, these books provide a clear and logicalexplanation of the foundations of cell biophysics, teaching transport and the electrical propertiesof cells from a combined biological, physical, and engineering viewpoint.Each volume containsintroductory chapters that motivate the material and present it in a broad historical context.Important experimental results and methods are described. Theories are derived almost always fromfirst principles so that students develop an understanding of not only the predictions of the theorybut also its limitations. Theoretical results are compared carefully with experimental findings andnew results appear throughout. There are many time-tested exercises and problems as well asextensive lists of references.The volume on transport is unique in that no other text on thisimportant topic develops it clearly and systematically at the student level. It explains all theprincipal mechanisms by which matter is transported across cellular membranes and describes thehomeostatic mechanisms that allow cells to maintain their concentrations of solutes, their volume,and the potential across the membrane. Chapters are organized by individual transport mechanisms --diffusion, osmosis, coupled solute and solvent transport, carrier-mediated transport, and iontransport (both passive and active). A final chapter discusses the interplay of all these mechanismsin cellular homeostasis.The volume on the electrical properties of cells covers both electricallyinexcitable cells as well as electrically excitable cells such as neurons and muscle cells. Includedare chapters on lumped-parameter and distributed-parameter models of cells, linear electricproperties of cells, the Hodgkin-Huxley model of the giant axon of the squid, saltatory conductionin myelinated nerve fibers, and voltage-gated ion channels.
