Fractals in Molecular Biophysics [Hardcover]

Historically, science has sought to reduce complex problems to their simplest components, but more recently it has recognized the merit of studying complex phenomena in situ. Fractal geometry is one such appealing approach, and this book discusses its application to complex problems in molecular biophysics. The book provides a detailed, unified treatment of fractal aspects of protein and structure dynamics, fractal reaction kinetics in biochemical systems, sequence correlations in DNA and proteins, and descriptors of chaos in enzymatic systems. In an area that has been slow to acknowledge the use of fractals, this is an important addition to the literature, offering a glimpse of the wealth of possible applications to complex problems.

1. What Are Fractals?
2. Fractal Aspects of Protein Structure
3. Loops, Polymer Statistics, and Helix-Coil Transitions
4. The Multifractality of Biomacromolecules
5. Fractal Diffusion and Chemical Kinetics
6. Are Protein Dynamics Fractal?
7. Fractons and Vibrational Relaxation in Proteins
8. Encoded Walks and Correlations in Sequence Data
9. Percolation
10. Chaos in Biochemical Systems
Index

The book is devoted to various applications of the modern concept of fractals to molecular, cellular, and metabolic systems. First, the basic terminology of self-similarity, polymer statistics, renormalization groups, and multifractality is introduced . . . Then temporal phenomena . . . are considered. One chapter discusses correlations and entropies of sequence data. Another chapter deals with applications of percolation theory: antibody receptor clustering, microdomains in biomembranes, and the hydration of proteins. The final chapter reviews chaos in enzymatic systems. The chapters constitute almost self-contained reviews, each with an introduction, a summary, and references. The book should be of interest to a broad readership--specialists in fractals can learn about interesting biological applicaló›