How could solving computational complexity problems like NP hard problems and traveling salesman help solve cancer?

Question

I’ve heard that solving these problems could help solve cancer specifically through protein folding problems but I have no idea how.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Proteins are *really* complicated. Like, obscenely complicated. But they’re all made from the same group of 20 or so amino acids. As your ribosomes stick amino acids together, the molecular forces between them causes them to fold into the plethora of proteins that make up all of you.

Imagine being told that you need to make [this](https://i.imgur.com/ChAYqYa.jpg) and the only instructions you’re given is [this](https://i.imgur.com/rrImfVG.jpg). Sure, you know that folding that piece of paper along those lines will turn it into that dragon. But you don’t know which way to fold those or which order to do it in, and if you fold it even once the wrong way or in the wrong order, the entire thing comes out wrong and you have no way of knowing until you’re mostly finished.

And also you can’t even see anything, your hands are in a box and you’re doing everything by feel. And also it’s like, ten different pieces of paper with different patterns that all have to be done perfectly and then put together somehow.

That’s kind of what it’s like to try to figure out how protein folding happens. The only real way to figure it out is to just…do it. Put all of the pieces into a computer program and tell the program to start putting them together and see what happens. There’s no elegant solution for that, no simple, generalized rule for how a protein goes together. That makes it computationally complex. A computer just has to sit there and try and try and try and try and try different combinations.

All of that matters because proteins are how your body does…everything. Everything in you is either made of proteins or made by proteins. They send the signals that your cells to use to decide to grow and split or self-destruct, and to build the tags that tell your immune cells not to attack them. If we can understand how proteins fold, we can understand how your DNA codes to build them. If we understand how your DNA codes to build them, we can understand how your DNA was damaged to cause them to fail, and maybe how to fix your DNA. We can better understand how the proteins cause those signals to happen, which might allow us to figure out medicines that target those specific signals. All of those things would be useful tools to help us fight cancer.