[FOM] Constructivism and physics

[José Félix Costa]

Eray Ozkural wrote:

«Excuse me. Do you mean that the physics of protein folding is unknown or it
is impossible to simulate? Might it be because quantum effects are
involved?»

It is possible, it is being done in several Labs. Methods involved are not
fast enough.
Information about proteins and other molecules grows faster than the number
of quantum chemical analysis.

Sophisticated methods involving soft computing have been developed to
authomatically deliver secundary and tertiary structure up to some margin of
error.

Huge databases (e.g., on protein linear information) exist on the web.
My former MSc Student Sara, years ago, worked a bit on this -- 
http://eden.dei.uc.pt/~sara/tese.sara.pdf (MSc Dissertation).

I think that the most interesting aspect is that the true chemistry of
proteins is ''not real relevant'' to their functioning: function is form,
form determines functioning more that the specific chemical composition.

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J. Felix Costa
Departamento de Matematica
Instituto Superior Tecnico
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, PORTUGAL
tel:      351 - 21 - 841 71 45
fax:     351 - 21 - 841 75 98
e-mail:   fgc at math.ist.utl.pt
www:    http://fgc.math.ist.utl.pt/jfc.htm
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