This survey for mathematicians summarizes several works by the author on protein geometry and protein function with applications to viral glycoproteins in general and the spike glycoprotein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in particular. Background biology and biophysics are sketched. This body of work culminates in a postulate that protein secondary structure regulates mutation, with backbone hydrogen bonds materializing in critical regions to avoid mutation, and disappearing from other regions to enable it.
@article{arxiv.2208.07653,
title = {Protein Geometry, Function and Mutation},
author = {Robert Penner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.07653},
year = {2022}
}