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A comment on Algorithm generates practical paper-folding patterns to produce any 3D structure. Parent comment

Re:Algorithm generates practical paper-folding patterns to p... by gilleain on Thursday June 22, 2017 @12:45PM (#14613498)
> could this be applied in some manner to understanding protein folding? Ehhh. Probably not? It's hard to say without the algorithm, really.

The main problem (apart from not modelling any of the chemistry of proteins) would be what your target shape would be. You can consider a folded protein to be the 'blob' formed by taking the surface formed by rolling a water across the outer atoms. Or you could consider just the backbone as a kind of tube.

An origami pattern for just the surface would have no internals. On the other hand, the pattern for the backbone would tell you nothing about how the sidechains and backbone interact.

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Re:Algorithm generates practical paper-folding patterns to p... by dnautics on Friday June 23, 2017 @03:55AM (#14617636)
Why would it? The transformation here is different. Flat, 2d manifold to a nondifferentiable surface in 3-space. Vs. 1d manifold embedded in 3-space. All they have in common is the term of art 'folding' and embedding into 3 space from q lower dimension.
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