Some operations research methods for analyzing protein sequences and structures

Operations Research is probably one of the most successful fields of applied mathematics used in Economics, Physics, Chemistry, almost everywhere one has to analyze huge amounts of data. Lately, these techniques were introduced in biology, especially in the protein analysis area to support biologists. The fast growth of protein data makes operations research an important issue in bioinformatics, a science which lays on the border between computer science and biology. This paper gives a short overview of the operations research techniques currently used to support structural and functional analysis of proteins. Received: February 2006, Revised: May 2006