MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIE TY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC
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For defending the body,
physics has a game plan
Ordinarily it’s a good idea not to confuse
a physicist with a physician. One is a student of the laws of nature, the other is a
healer of the flaws of biology. But every
once in a while nature’s laws can illuminate biology’s flaws, and physics can offer
a valuable supplement to pharmacies.
That’s especially true when coping
with biological complexity requires quantification. Physicists
have long known that logically simple principles underlie the
complex phenomena of ordinary experience. For the motion
of a single particle, Newton’s laws (with Einsteinian corrections if needed) can answer any question you’d like to ask. If
huge numbers of particles are bouncing around, the simplicity
of the laws is masked by the multitude of motions.
Fortunately for much of the modern world, physicists
pondering the gulf between lawful simplicity and real-life
complexity have developed a method for mass predictability.
Known as statistical mechanics (more colloquially, statistical physics), this approach depends on the reliably average
behavior that emerges from untrackable interactions among
individuals. Scientists use statistical mechanics to analyze
chemical reactions, the behavior of gases, the properties of
materials and even patterns in stock trading and traffic jams.
Similar complexities show up in many realms of biology,
nowhere more notably than in the body’s cellular battalions
for fighting disease, the immune system. As contributing correspondent Susan Gaidos writes in this issue (Page 22), the
immune system comprises a team of cells every bit as specialized as players at various football positions, operating under
a game plan much more complicated than anything you’ll
find in the NFL. Basic medical biology has not mastered all
the intricacies of the immune system’s struggles to preserve
healthy bodies. Statistical mechanics could help medical
researchers predict how the immune system will respond to
agents of disease, how drugs will alter the course of an infection or how vaccines could fortify the body’s defenses.
Applying statistical physics to immunity is a new
endeavor — it’s still the first quarter, so to speak. And it will
never fully substitute for biological insight into the shifting
strategies of disease-inducing microbes and viruses. But the
merging of perspectives from physics with those from biology could improve the odds that humans will someday outwit
those microbes and viruses much more successfully, much
more often. —Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief
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