| Abstract | Life science applications in undergraduate mathematics classes typically focus on ODE and PDE modeling of biological systems. Biomathematics courses may also illustrate the utility of graph theoretic, numerical, and statistical approaches in the study of DNA and RNA molecules. However, in-class examples and homework exercises based on protein structure analysis are rarely exploited despite an inherently large number of quantitative applications. This talk will begin with a basic overview of proteins and their 3D structures, followed by a description of one particular approach to protein structure analysis that draws on methods from computational geometry, finite mathematics, probability theory, computer programming, and statistical mechanics. The example provides a rich new source of pedagogical tools that are easily implemented in the mathematics classroom. |
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