Measurement of nanoscale interactions in biological systems and data analysis

The course aims at providing the students with knowledge of theoretical models and experimental techniques to understand relevant interactions taking place at the nanoscale in biological systems. In particular, the course will focus on modern approaches for the quantitative measurements of nanoscale forces at biomolecular and cellular level. High-resolution imaging and force spectroscopy techniques will be presented and discussed. These methodological and experimental approaches represent a valuable nanobiotechnological tool for the quantitative understanding of basic mechanisms in complex biological processes.
The students will also learn how to extract quantitative information from the experimental data. To this purpose, the basic principles of statistical data analysis, data fitting, estimation of uncertainties and assessment of the statistical significance of differences between measured values will be presented.
The course will include practical demonstrations of the scanning probe techniques in the laboratory and data analysis sessions, based on experimental data from the experiments discussed in the classroom. The course may include topical seminars by experts in the field.

After the successful completion of the course, the students will possess a robust fundamental knowledge of some basic physical interactions taking place in biological systems at the biomolecular and cellular level. The students will know the basic principles of the experimental techniques for the quantitative characterisation of nanoscale phenomena, in particular based on scanning probe microscopy, and will be able to design experiments to investigate fundamental biological processes.
The students will also acquire practical skills (including basic programming ability) to analyse the experimental data, by fitting suitable analytical or numerical model to them data fitting, estimate uncertainties and assess the statistical significance of the results.
Moreover, the students will acquire the ability to perform literature searches and to critically evaluate the collected information in relation to the specificic problem they are addressing.