Graph Theory

Introduction

In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of vertices. A graph may be undirected, meaning that there is no distinction between the two vertices associated with each edge, or its edges may be directed from one vertex to another

Applications in biology

They are used mainly in :
- interactions of molecules in principle
- protein interactions: possible topology of complexes can be predicted
- studies on behaviour, e.g. interactions between members of a species
- taxonomical trees

Current projects

East Tennessee State University

Proteins as Graphs

This project aims to translate molecular descriptors to bio molecular descriptors so that they could establish a relationship between biological activities and chemical properties and structure.

for more info : http://www.etsu.edu/iqb/Math%20Bio%20proj.pdf

New York University

RNA Structure and Function

THis project aims to do theoretical modeling of RNA in vitro selection (an experimental technique for discovering novel RNAs), predicting RNA tertiary structures, and designing novel RNAs for biological applications

for more info :http://www.biomath.nyu.edu/index/webpage_rna_2007.html

Opinions

In my opinion this technique is something that could potentially help my group's project as it is largely related to predictions and forcasts of events using graphs. It's applications are also useful for doing designs and stuff like that. I would recommend this technique for my fellow classmates who are also working on their prediction features(provided that they could understand this properly). Although this is a good technique, there also a few problems in this technique(Like enumeration, graph coloring, etc). If still dun understand can click here =)