Physics of Life Network 2 (PoLNet2)

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The 'Physics of Life' is a current Grand Challenge research theme for EPSRC. It is a very fruitful interdisciplinary research field, and a strategic investment for the UK because of the potential our research base has to make leading contributions at or beyond the best efforts in the EU, USA and China, even though we lag behind these somewhat in investment. The strategic imperative arises from (i) the new techniques in experiment, theory and modelling from soft matter physics, instrumentation (especially imaging) and computational physics (including large data processing), together with (ii) a rich field of biological challenges that require physical methods to address at many length scales of biological systems from the molecular to population levels. This is even more true now than at the start of the first Network. Examples of (i) are: advanced AFM of membranes, high-resolution and 3D methods in optical microscopy, high-performance computing of complex molecular matter, the subfield of 'protein physics', field-theories of phase separation, coarse-graining in macromolecular matter, active soft matter, non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Examples of (ii) are: tissue growth and form, cell differentiation, cellular environment sensing, cell membrane rafts, evolutionary dynamics, fibrillar self-assembly, molecular motors.