Discrete math - links to biology?

[S.N.]

Discrete math -- links to biology?

Hey,

I'm in a math and biology program in college and I've recently become more and more into the discrete side of math. I was wondering if anybody knew of any areas of research that integrate discrete mathematics and biology, as there doesn't seem to be much when I do a few searches. Pretty general question, I know, but is anyone aware of any offhand examples?

 

[Studiot]

Concrete or Discrete Math can seem a tad dry and academic but it does lead to useful results in Biology.

Probability, and the design of experiments has always been an important area.
Chaos theory and cellular automata.
Signal theory in nervous transmission.
Statistical mechanics, which is about how the random actions of lots of small things can bring about an aggregate effect or law, can be invoked to explain the workings and behaviour of biological and chemical systems.

 

[JSuarez]

You may want to take a look at these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_game_theory"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_alignment"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_phylogenetics"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_genetics"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics"

 

[S.N.]

Thanks guys, interesting stuff!