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We haven't mentioned
Folding@Home
on the news page for
a little while. If you haven't heard of it, it's a
distributed-computing project that simulates protein behaviour.
This research can be used to help find cures for many diseases,
including cancer. Installing a background task on your PC allows
Folding@Home to use your idle CPU cycles - the ones you're not
using - to process this data. There is a worldwide race to produce
the most data, and currently OCAU's team is the #1 team in the
world.
However, with the Australian summer coming into full blast-furnace
strength, many of our members are having to slow their PC's down.
This is affecting our overall output, opening the door for our
long-term opponent, HardFolding, to take back the #1 crown. The
solution is to get more PC's folding for OCAU, and that's how you
can help if you like. Again, all it requires is the simple
installation of a background task. Then, whenever your PC is
turned on, it'll be helping with important research and helping
keep OCAU #1 until the winter returns and we can power ahead
again. As it's a low-priority background task, Folding doesn't
interfere with the responsiveness or performance of your PC when
you're using it.
To find out
more, check out our
Folding Page
and our
Team OCAU DC Forum.
For how to
get started, see the
Join OCAU's Team
page.
Thanks Agg for giving the
Folding team a plug on the main
OCAU
News Page. Welcome to everyone that have followed the links
here, we hope that you like what you see and join us in the fight
to find cures to many a dreadful disease. Here is a quote from the
forums from a new member Doc Seppo who has an inside view
on what this protein folding is all about...
My doctorate is
in protein structure, and for my first post here I just wanted to
thank all of you for contributing to the solution of a problem
that really is the Holy Grail of modern biochemistry. Every day I
work on drug design problems that benefit in a critical way from
knowing the shapes of the proteins that drugs interact with. But
the vast majority of proteins have unknown structures, so folding
is the only way to predict these shapes. I've studied the methods
that the Pande lab is using in TINKER and GROMACS and I'm
confident that these people are seriously on to something by
relying on many short simulations in parallel instead of a few
long ones. After working in a protein-folding lab that was doing
Alzheimer's work, I can assure you first-hand that your cycles are
being invested in good methods and a fine cause. Thanks again,
folders!
That statement sort says it all
and yet again confirms that the
Folding@Home project is on the right track and working towards
producing some results in the near future that will benefit
everyone. For some more reading on what this project is all about
check out
this article by The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. |
