Theoretical Physics of Viruses
Jef Wagner
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Union College
Viruses are small biological agents that replicate using the machinery already present in a living cell. As we have all experienced when viruses infect the cells of an organism, the organism (i.e. you) get sick. But viruses can be used for more than just making you sick. The virus's ability to infect and deliver a cargo into a cell has been used for targeted drug delivery and gene therapy. Understanding how viruses work at a fundamental level can help both understand treatment for viral infections as well as engineer novel uses for viruses going forward. In this talk, I will show how we can use the tools of mathematics and theoretical physics to model the fundamental behavior of viruses.