Biological Physics

Biological physics applies the methods and concepts of physics to understand how living systems function across scales—from individual molecules and cells to tissues and organisms. At the molecular level, it elucidates how protein conformations, nucleic‐acid mechanics and membrane dynamics drive biological processes. At the cellular level, it investigates how forces generated by the cytoskeleton and cell–matrix interactions regulate shape, migration and mechanotransduction. At larger scales, it explores the collective behaviour of cells in tissues, the propagation of signals in neural networks and the physical principles underlying homeostasis. By integrating quantitative imaging, micro- and nanotechnology, computational modelling and theoretical frameworks, biological physics bridges molecular mechanisms with emergent phenomena such as development, disease progression and environmental adaptation. Its insights inform bioengineering applications—from tissue scaffolds and mechanotherapeutics to bioinspired energy‐harvesting devices—and continually refine our conception of life as an active, non-equilibrium system governed by universal physical laws.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Photonic-crystal force microscopy has introduced a reference-free method for mapping vascular cell traction with submicrometre resolution. A deformable photonic-crystal hydrogel converts vertical and lateral forces into visible colour shifts at video-rate speeds, enabling long-term, multi-scale imaging of cell‐matrix interactions without fiducial markers. In photosynthetic energy transfer, single-photon experiments on bacterial light-harvesting complexes have shown that individual quanta initiate ultrafast exciton migration under ambient conditions, confirming that natural antennae operate at the single-photon limit. Complementing these results, two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy of phycobilisome trimers has revealed that resonant vibrational modes undergo quantum-phase synchronization: anti-symmetric vibrations dissipate while symmetric modes preserve exciton–vibrational coherence nearly ten times longer, offering a mechanism for sustained quantum coherence in noisy biological environments.

Biological Physics publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in biological physics across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Traction-force microscopy (TFM): A technique that infers the forces exerted by adherent cells on a compliant substrate by tracking substrate deformations.

Photonic-crystal hydrogel: A periodic polymer network whose local refractive index—and thus structural colour—changes in response to mechanical deformation.

Exciton: A bound state of an electron and hole that transports electronic excitation energy across coupled pigment molecules.

Vibronic coupling: The interaction between electronic and vibrational states that can sustain coherent energy transfer in pigment–protein complexes.

Persistence length: A measure of filament stiffness, defined as the contour length over which directional correlations along a polymer decay significantly.

References

1. Imaging cellular forces with photonic crystals. Nature Communications (2023).
2. 3D Micropatterned Traction Force Microscopy: A Technique to Control 3D Cell Shape While Measuring Cell‐Substrate Force Transmission. Advanced Science (2024).
3. Fluctuation-Based Super-Resolution Traction Force Microscopy. Nano Letters (2020).
4. Single-photon absorption and emission from a natural photosynthetic complex. Nature (2023).
5. Quantum phase synchronization via exciton-vibrational energy dissipation sustains long-lived coherence in photosynthetic antennas. Nature Communications (2024).
6. Protein-Based Model for Energy Transfer between Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting Complexes Is Constructed Using a Direct Protein–Protein Conjugation Strategy. Journal of the American Chemical Society (2023).