Applying Google’s page-rank software to the molecular world

February 15, 2012

Google's PageRank software has been adapted to determine the way molecules are shaped, organized, and combined (credit: WSU)

Aurora Clark, an associate professor of chemistry at Washington State University, has adapted Google’s PageRank software to create molecular networks that scientists can use to determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions without the expense, logistics, and occasional danger of lab experiments.

The software focuses on hydrogen bonds in water, earth’s most abundant solvent and a major player in most every biological process. In living things, water can perform key functions like helping proteins fold or organizing itself around the things it dissolves so molecules stay apart in a fluid state. But the processes are dazzlingly complex, changing in fractions of a second and in myriad possible forms.

Much like the trillion-plus Web domains on the Internet./.../