Recent years have seen a growing interest in and activity at the interface between physics and biology, with the realization that both subjects have a great deal to learn from and to teach to one another. A particularly promising aspect of this interface concerns the area of cooperative phenomena and phase transitions. The present book addresses both the structure and motion of biological materials and the increasingly complex behaviour that arises out of interactions in large systems, giving rise to self organization, adaptation, selection and evolution: concepts of interest not only to biology and living systems but also within condensed matter physics. The approach adopted by