Mission
The Molecular and Statistical Biophysics Group at SISSA is a multidisciplinary group of scientists studying the physics of biological systems. We combine concepts from statistical mechanics, molecular dynamics, polymer physics and computation to understand the physical principles of living matter.
RNA, molecular dynamics, and more
PI: Giovanni Bussi
RNA molecules have a central role in gene expression and regulation and are often considered as the dark matter of our genome. In our group we develop and use computational tools to study RNA structure and dynamics, including molecular dynamics, enhanced sampling, integrative methods, and bioinformatics. In addition, we co-develop the popular software plugin PLUMED.
Topology and Entanglement in Soft Matter
PI: Cristian Micheletti
Filamentous molecules inevitably entangle when sufficiently long and densely packed, typical of biological and soft matter systems. Our group studies the implications of knots, links, and other types of entanglement for the emergent properties of these materials. To this end, we combine statistical mechanics, coarse-grained modeling, and computation on both classical computers and quantum annealers.
Conformations and dynamics of biologically-inspired polymers
PI: Angelo Rosa
Polymers play a fundamental role in everydays life, in particular biopolymers like DNA and chromatin are at the foundations of all life-forms. In the Rosa lab, we develop theoretical and numerical tools to model and describe the spatial conformations and dynamics of these objects by focusing, in particular, on their physical properties.
Stochastic biological systems
PI: Christoph Zechner
Stochasticity plays an important role in many biological processes, ranging from gene regulation to cell fate determination. In our group, we use applied probability, statistical physics and computation to study how robust biological behaviors emerge from stochastic molecular processes. We also develop statistical inverse methods to infer stochastic biological systems from single-cell / single-molecule experiments.