Rozzychan

#Knitting #craft #fiberArt #proteomics

I am so interested in whether knitting techniques that make 3D shapes can be used to help understand protein folding.

Knitting using continuous strings to make these complex shapes, and it has to do with things like tension and materials, and I see this can have an analogy with the primary, secondary, and tertiary structures.

can we use similar strategies to engineer protein shapes from sequence?

Mar 14 at 5:34pmWeb
Show threadElizenery🔻Mar 14
@Rozzychan I'd place my bet on #crochet rather than knitting. If you search for crochet and science, or crochet and maths, you'll find some interesting stuff.
Show threadDan Drake 🦆Mar 14
@lisettedeboer @Rozzychan I only do crochet, and am a mathematician -- so I do love crochet and math(s). But I would hesitate to sell knitting short! There is a *lot* of mathematics there, too.
Show threadElizenery🔻Mar 14
@ddrake @Rozzychan I do both crochet and knitting. Totally aware of the maths involved in both. And counting can be surprisingly difficult 🙈 . For exploratory work I think crochet is more suitable. More flexible for playing around. But perhaps that's because I'm more experienced in crocheting.
Show threadFanCityKnits 🇺🇦🧶Mar 14

@Rozzychan

I know nothing about protein folding and if hyperbolic shapes have anything to do with it - but there's a quite a bit of how to visualize the latter with the help of crochet. Just look up the coral reef project by the Wertheim sisters or Daina Taimina.

Show threadmonstrelineMar 15

@Rozzychan Spooky! I just mentioned protein folding to a friend earlier today. Open my #knitting list and see you post first. It’s wild, I work in foodservice…I probably mention protein folding once a decade.

I can’t offer you any helpful insight but I think if you know enough about both, you can probably do anything!

Show threadAnna6d ago
@Rozzychan part of the problem here is that you would think that after all these centuries the materials science part of knitting would be well understood. It isn’t. There’s lots of practical knowledge both in the industry and with knitters themselves but there has been preciously little formal attention, so there’s not much there to translate over. Someone did a phd in it at Georgia Tech which was very fun (and a bit maligned in some knitting circles because “we knew all that”).