First of all, sorry if this is rather basic but it is certainly not my field of expertise.
So, I'm working with protein surface and I have this cavity:
It is part of a larger, watertight, triangular mesh (.ply format) that represents a protein surface.
What I want to do, is find whether this particular "sub-mesh" is found in other proteins. However, I'm not looking for a perfect fit, rather similar "sub-meshes" since the only place I will find this exact shape is in the original protein.
I've been reading the docs for the Python modules trimesh and open3d. Trimesh does have a comparison module, but it doesn't seem to have the functionality I'm looking for. Also, open3d has a "compute point cloud distance" function that is recommended to compare the difference between two point cloud or meshes.
However, since what I'm actually trying to find is similarity, I would need a way to fit my cavity's "sub-mesh" onto the surface of the protein I'm analyzing, and then "score" how different or deformed the fitted submesh is. Another way would be to rotate and translate my sub-mesh to match the most vertices and faces on the protein surface and score that I guess.
Just a heads-up, I'm a biotechnologist, self-taught in Python and with extremely limited experience in anything 3D. At this point, anything helps, be it a paper, Python module or whatever knowledge you have that you think might be useful.
Thank you very much for any help you can provide with this!