Cortexian
October 16th, 2009, 09:16 PM
http://folding.stanford.edu/
Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/images/FAHdownload.png (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download)
What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Protein folding is linked to disease, such as Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Diseases), such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download) and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.
What have we done so far?
We have had several successes. You can read about them on our Science (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Science) page, on our Awards (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Awards) page, or go directly to our Results (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers) page.
Want to learn more?
Click on the links on the left for downloads or more information. You can also download our Executive Summary (http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/FoldingFAQ.pdf), which is a PDF suitable for distribution. One can also help by donating funds to the project (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Donate), via Stanford University.Start folding if you've got a decent GPU or CPU, it only uses available system resources and it will free up any resources required for other applications when they request them. There's no downside except for a slight increase in power usage and heat output from your PC.
Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/images/FAHdownload.png (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download)
What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Protein folding is linked to disease, such as Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Diseases), such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download) and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.
What have we done so far?
We have had several successes. You can read about them on our Science (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Science) page, on our Awards (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Awards) page, or go directly to our Results (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers) page.
Want to learn more?
Click on the links on the left for downloads or more information. You can also download our Executive Summary (http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/FoldingFAQ.pdf), which is a PDF suitable for distribution. One can also help by donating funds to the project (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Donate), via Stanford University.Start folding if you've got a decent GPU or CPU, it only uses available system resources and it will free up any resources required for other applications when they request them. There's no downside except for a slight increase in power usage and heat output from your PC.