The phrase "be applied to understanding" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to express that something can be used to gain an understanding of a certain concept or idea. For example, "The insights gained from this experiment can be applied to understanding how different cultures interact with each other."
The goal of this course is to explore different genomic approaches and technologies, to learn how they work from a molecular biology view point, and to understand how they can be applied to understanding biological systems.
We've found that the same mathematical metaphors that allow us to understand online social networks can also be applied to understanding the gene regulatory networks of cancer.
The results may help scientists understand how societal trends evolve and take hold, and researchers say the method could be applied to understanding other cultural traits.
We also consider how this can be applied to understanding the dynamics behind the volcanological processes of in-situ glass fragmentation during quenching in wet environments and phreatomagmatism.
This provides a promising tool for characterizing the microstructure in a way that can be applied to understanding properties of engineering significance.
Disturbance principles have traditionally been applied to understanding patterns of species diversity, but they can also be applied to understanding the broader concept of biodiversity.
The model is applied to understanding the costs and benefits of prison privatization.
Broad screening and bioinformatics/chemoinformatics have been applied to understanding off-target effects of GPCR ligands.
Concepts developed for understanding today's atmosphere are applied to understanding the record of past climate change and the prospects for climate change in the future.
In categorization, these models have been applied to understanding how different dimensions are combined in making categorization decisions.
However, significantly fewer resources have been applied to understanding the human factor within this social ecological system.
