While mathematical beauty is often not noticed by ordinary people, amazing nature offers to observe the appearance of amazing shapes and patterns in it with its mathematical regularity. Different numbers and numerical relationships form the basis of the laws of nature, and if we can recognize them, we can understand the surprising patterns and connections between life and mathematical formulas.
Scientists have now discovered a surprising link between mathematics and genetics that allows us to better understand the evolutionary processes of life at the molecular level.
Number theory, which includes many mathematical functions such as multiplication, subtraction, division and addition in integers, includes the famous Fibonacci sequence that can be found in various objects in nature such as pine cones, pineapple, sunflower seeds.
“The beauty of number theory lies not only in the abstract relationships it reveals between integers, but also in the deep mathematical structures it illuminates in our natural world.”– explains Oxford University mathematician Ard Louis.
Researchers like Louis and colleagues study mutations and their effects on evolutionary changes in organisms’ genomes.
Some mutations can cause disease by changing the genetic sequence or, on the contrary, provide new advantages to the organism; others do not affect the appearance or behavior of the organism but are an indication of the workings of evolution.
Mutation resistance of organisms creates genetic diversity and can be studied with the help of mathematical modeling.
Louis and colleagues studied protein folding and RNA structure and showed that resistance to mutations can be maximized by a specific genetic sequence that corresponds to a particular phenotype or trait. Their work also proved that the maximum stability corresponds to the Blancmanger curve, which has a repeating fractal structure and is associated with a fundamental concept in number theory called the fraction of the sum of digits. Source
Source: Port Altele
