Site-Specific DNA Recombination and Fluid Vortex Reconnection

Reconnection is a fundamental event in many area of science, including interaction of fluid vortices and flux tubes in fluid mechanics and magnetohydrodynamics, and site-specific recombination in DNA. This talk will discuss the mathematical similarities between reconnection events in biology and physics, and the relationship between iterated reconnection and curve topology. In particular, the reconnection cascade from (2,2k+1) torus knots to (2,2k) torus links to the unlink of two unknotted circles observed in DNA is also observed in fluid vortex reconnections.