Mathematical Biology

Structure and dynamics of virus capsids

The centre-of-mass positions of the proteins which form the capsid of the Rice Yellow Mottle virus.

Together with a group of people at the Department of Mathematical Sciences in Durham, I work on applications of mathematics to biological systems. Recent work in this area includes the analysis of dynamics of the protein capsids of icosahedrical viruses, such as the one depicted on the left. See e.g.

The twenty-four near-instabilities of Caspar-Klug viruses
arXiv:0804.4275 with François Englert and Anne Taormina.

Group theory of icosahedral virus capsids: a dynamical top-down approach
arXiv:0806.1029 with Anne Taormina.

Microtubules

I have also been involved in a mathematical modelling project on microtubule dynamics.

A thermodynamic model of microtubule assembly and disassembly
PLoS one 4 (2009) e6378 with Bernard Piette, Junli Liu, Andrei Smertenko, Timothy Hawkins, Michael Deeks, Roy Quinlan, Wojciech Zakrzewski and Patrick Hussey.

These mathematical biology activities take place in the context of the Biophysical Sciences Institute in Durham.