Applied math seminar: Topological descriptions of protein folding (Helen Wong, CMC)

Knotting in proteins was once considered exceedingly rare.  However, systematic analyses of solved protein structures over the last two decades have demonstrated the existence of many deeply knotted proteins, and researchers now hypothesize that the knotting presents some functional or evolutionary advantage for those proteins.

Unfortunately, there is very little known (whether experimentally, through computer simulations, or theoretically) about how proteins fold into knotted configurations.  In this talk, we will discuss some of the theorized pathways from a topological point of view.  In particular, we propose a new theoretical pathway for protein knotting and determine its feasibility for certain families of  proteins.