1. Introduction to polymers:
2. Protein folding:
- Entropy and elasticity
- Interactions and the coil-globule transition
- Simple lattice models of protein folding
- Random Energy Model for freezing
3. DNA and RNA:
- Role of hydrophobicity and other interactions
- Secondary structure elements: alpha-helices & beta-sheets
- Classification of protein structures, and their evolution
- Dynamics of fast folding
- Watson-Crick pairing
- Energy/entropy considerations, and DNA melting
- RNA secondary structures
- Hartree equation for obtaining secondary structures without pseudo-knots
L6: (MK) Phases of polymers
L7: (MK) Compact polymers and REM
L8: (LM) Interactions in biology
L9: (LM) Protein folding energetics
L10: (LM) Protein folding kinetics
L11: (MK) DNA
L12: (MK) RNA