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What are the applications of knot theory to biology/pharmacology?

I guess there should be some, since proteins are quite long and some of their properties are probably related to whether they are knotted or not.

Some related questions:

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    $\begingroup$ In my experience, the "applications" of knot theory to these fields are fairly elementary and really don't use any deep theory, but I'd love to be proven wrong. $\endgroup$
    – Jim Conant
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 20:33
  • $\begingroup$ I kind of ask a similar question to a researcher doing maths for biology once, like "did someone use symmetry theories with a significant impact in biology ?" (I had in mind the Noether theorem and relatives). His answer : "it seems it is not enough to apply known theorems of math-phy to math-bio, it really needs new technology and objects". $\endgroup$
    – Adrien Hardy
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 20:34

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In the end of this paper by Loius Kauffman and Jay Goldman, they use some properties of rational tangles to deduce the different ways in which DNA can recombine. I think I have seen other papers that do similar things.

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A web search on DNA and Knot Theory yields hits, for example

http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/bioed/webmodules/DNAknot.html

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Some papers on knots and proteins:

Related:

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