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4567St. John's Bluff Rd. S. Jacksonville, FL 32224 904-620-2653 904-620-2818 (fax) email:mathstat@unf.edu |
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Mathematics has many important applications in biochemistry. The SOD (SuperOxideDismutase) enzyme, shown above, is an antiradical or antioxident, meaning that it moves around the body binding to and then deactivating free radicals in the body, preventing them from causing cancer or other cell damage in the body. It is believed that antiradicals such as SOD can help prevent cancer, heart disease, and a host of other diseases, and perhaps even delay the aging process. The electrostatic steering effect of theSOD enzyme enables it to attract, bind to, and deactivate free radicalsin the human body. The negatively charged surface surrounding the postivelycharged binding sites has the effect of ``steering'' the radical into hesite. The above image was generated by MC, a small self-contained parallel adaptive multilevel finite element package, which has been designed, developed, and maintained by UCSD Mathematics Professor Michael Holst. For more information on MC, please visit MichaelHolst's web page.
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