Are there applications of algebraic geometry/commutative algebra to biology/pharmacology?


It might be that some Gröbner basis technique is used somewhere? I know there are some applications to robotics — in solving some complicated non-linear equations. Maybe something similar can happen in biology.




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Applications of algebraic geometry/commutative algebra to biology/pharmacology
1. René Thom's theory of morphogenesis involves singularities, unfoldings, perturbations of analytic/geometric structures, etc., which, in its turn, involves (or, rather, should involve, as the whole theory is rather sketchy) a good deal of commutative algebra.
2. A conference "[Moduli spaces and macromolecules](http://www.ihes.fr/jsp/site/Portal.jsp?document_id=3299&portlet_id=14)".
3. Some biological models involve systems of boolean equations, or sentences of propositional calculus, which could be interpreted as polynomials over GF(2), with subsequent application of Gröbner basis technique. A (more or less random) sample of possibly relevant papers (I avoid mentioning algebraic statistics which was mentioned many times elsewhere):


	* G. Boniolo, M. D'Agostino, P.P. Di Fiore, Zsyntax: A formal language for molecular biology with projected applications in text mining and biological prediction,PLoS ONE 5 (2010), N3, e9511
	DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0009511
	* A.S. Jarrah and R. Laubenbacher, Discrete models of biochemical networks: the toric variety of nested canalyzing functions, Algebraic Biology, Lect. Notes Comp. Sci. 4545 (2007), 15-22 DOI:10.1007/978-3-540-73433-8\_2
	* R. Laubenbacher and B. Stigler, A computational algebra approach to the reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks, J. Theor. Biol. 229 (2004), 523-537 DOI:10.1016/j.jtbi.2004.04.037 arXiv:q-bio/0312026
	* I. Lynce and J.P. Marques Silva, Efficient haplotype inference with boolean satisfiability, AAAI'06, July 2006; SAT in Bioinformatics: making the case with haplotype inference, SAT'06, August 2006; [http://sat.inesc-id.pt/~ines](http://sat.inesc-id.pt/%7Eines)


