Biopolymers
Introduction
Primary structures (nucleic acids, protein, and polysaccharides)
Secondary structures
Tertiary structure and stabilizing interactions
 
Polymer conformation
The ideal chain
The Kuhn chain
The worm-like chain
Excluded volume interactions
Confinement in a tube; introduction to scaling
Deflection in a narrow tube
Stars and radial brushes
Chains under traction (ideal, wormlike, and swollen chain)
From the dilute to the semi-dilute regime
Chain statistics in the semi-dilute regime
 
Polyelectrolytes
Counterion condensation
The electrostatic potential
The non-linear Poisson–Boltzmann equation
The electrostatic persistence length
Electrostatic excluded volume
Flexible chains and electrostatic blobs
Spherical polyelectrolyte brushes
Polyelectrolytes in the semi-dilute regime
 
Polymer dynamics
Single chain dynamics
Pulling a chain into a hole
Dynamics of non-entangled chains in the semi-dilute regime
Entangled polymer dynamics; reptation
Dynamic scaling of polyelectrolytes
Gel electrophoresis
 
Higher order structures and their transitions
Supercoiled DNA (topology, free energy, long-range structure and branching)
Alternate secondary DNA structures (B–Z transition and cruciforms)
Helix-coil transition
Protein folding
 
Mesoscopic structures
Lyotropic liquid crystals (virial theory, orientation order, and phase coexistence)
Hexagonal packing of DNA
Bacteriophage DNA packaging
Crowding and entropy driven interactions (depletion)