Any application of vector spaces in Biology or Biotechnology?

2.8k Views Asked by At

I would like to know any application of vector spaces in Biology or Bitechnology, if you got an example i would be very glad to know it. But basically just what tool or what operations of vector spaces can be applied in those areas. Thanks beforehand.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER
  1. They use it to visualize 3D data (e.g. looking at outputs of CT scans). Look up "OpenGL" to see the kinds of matrix operations needed (basically using 4 by 4 matrices to represent 3D plus perspective).
  2. "Support Vector Machines" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine - these are used to analyze huge data sets. For example, protein folding, or analyzing the output of microarrays http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray, or analyzing DNA sequences.
  3. The fast Fourier transform could be regarded as linear algebra. This is used to analyze the output of MRI's (magnetic resonance imaging).
  4. Singular value decomposition - often used to find trends in data (often also used by subjects other than biology).
  5. This is a great article: http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/53/1-2/37 - they analyze genetic drift using matrices, or rather they analyze the properties of the matrices that arise out of the study of genetic drift.