The focus of this book is the elasticity of semiflexible polymers. The
statistical physics of short semiflexible filaments has been studied in
the context of single molecule stretching experiments. Such studies are
relevant to the understanding of the elasticity properties of
biopolymers like DNA, actin and microtubules. There is a chapter devoted
to the study of membranes. Experiments on red blood cells (RBCs) trapped
optically have been described and a simple theoretical model to account
for the observed features has been proposed.