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This article is a little different from the fare you’re used to getting from me: it’s for SIAM News, which is the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While the article contains equations, I wrote it to be understandable even if you skip over the math.

I will also have you know, I only included one of the many knot-theory puns I came up with while writing the piece. Professionalism, people. Professionalism.

Untangling DNA with Knot Theory

For SIAM News:

Long before there were sailors, nature learned to tie—and untie—knots. Certain DNA types, proteins, magnetic fields, fluid vortices, and other diverse phenomena can manifest in the form of loops, which sometimes end up tangled. But knots, kinks, and tangles are often undesirable for the system in which they occur; for instance, knotted DNA can kill its cell. In such cases, nature finds ways to restore order.

Mariel Vazquez of the University of California, Davis, uses topology to understand the knotting and unknotting of real-world molecules. Specifically, she and her colleagues employ topological concepts from knot theory to demonstrate that cells detangle DNA with optimal efficiency.

During her talk at the 2018 SIAM Annual Meeting, held in Portland, Ore., this July, Vazquez emphasized her work’s multidisciplinary nature; although she focuses on DNA, her research has applications beyond molecular biology.

[Read the rest at SIAM News…]