That’s right, the state of the art way to fold protein. If you already know what this is, then jump in and comment if I miss anything. If not, then follow along as I am about to take you on a quick journey of protein folding at home. Help out fellow man and use your computer to assist in the fight against disease.
First, let me state that I know jack shit about biology, or protein and the whole nature of things. I do believe your supposed to eat your weight in protein though. So, if you weight in at 125lbs, then your supposed to take in 125 grams of protein every day. I could be wrong though too. To be honest, biology doesn’t really excite me, except for the whole sex thing anyway. I kind of dig that. When I think of biology, I picture one of the scenes from Grease where they sing about biology in school. No, I don’t have a Grease fascination; my wife absolutely loves that movie. As for the rest of biology, I will leave that to others who have that passion for it. My excitements are with computers, Harley Davidsons, girls, and of course beer. Maybe some small variants of science, but most defiantly not biology. So, I did what anyone else can do and researched it a bit before I got involved. So, I am not speaking from knowledge, but more or less hear-say. Most of my readings were from Stanford University, so I think the source is trustworthy. Not to mention, many other top name players are also involved in folding, so I thought I would get involved too. Now I share my findings with you and you can decide if this is something you want to get involved with our not. It probably isn’t for everyone, but if you never knew about it, how would you know if it was or not. So, here it is.
What is it you ask? Well, in short (and as stated on many other information sites), Proteins are the biological workhorse that carries out vital functions in every living cell in our body. To carry out this very important task, proteins must “fold” into a complex three-dimensional structure. Proteins are used to support the skeleton, move our muscles, control the senses, defend against infections, digest food, and process those sweet emotions we all have, just to name a few. Although the actual talk of protein is not so much computer related, I do have a point. That is where folding @home comes in.
You see, accurate simulations of these proteins “folding” and “misfolding” enable the scientific community to better understand the development of many diseases, including Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Mad Cow, Sickle-Cell, Huntington, Cystic Fibrosis, Osteogenesis Imperfect, etc.. There is a pretty big list of other diseases that I can’t spell and I don’t even know what the hell they are. Maybe you know someone who is currently suffering from one of these diseases now and you what to know how you can help more. You can help easily. Just loan out your spare computer processing power of your personal computer when you’re not using it. That’s right, all you have to do is run a small application and leave your computer on. Then while you are all tucked away in your bed for the night dreaming of whatever you dream about, your computer will be joining other computers across the world creating a bigger more powerful supercomputer running “protein folding simulations”. Hence, folding@home.
It takes very little time for a protein to fold or misfold, but it is extremely complicated. Analysis of the folding of even the simplest of proteins requires significant computing power. The amount of power needed to perform these simulation calculations would cause most single supercomputers to crash under the pressure. Folding@home connects mass amounts of personal computers together with the Stanford mega computers.
The folding@home application runs in the background and logs onto the Stanford University server and downloads a little piece of the protein particle (known as a work unit or WU for short) then runs numerous simulations on it and sends back the data. Then it takes a little more, “folds” it and sends back that data. The faster your computer, the bigger slice of the WU you get. The work units take a long time to calculate on even the fastest home computers. Some work units take hours, others take days.
To find out more about folding@home, log onto the website http://folding.stanford.edu/ and see for yourself. You can download the application at http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download and you can choose from Windows (all flavors), Mac, Linux, or PS3. That’s right, you can even have your PlayStation 3 do some folding. There is nothing in it for me and I don’t have anything to do with them, so this is not an advertisement. Just an FYI in case you didn’t know.
When you install, you can set to join others in a team or just run it by yourself anonymously. If you want to join my team, you can join Safe Mode PC on team number 131313. Although I don’t leave mine on all the time like I did when I first installed it a year or so ago, I do run it as often as I can. I seem to have other things going on and then I forget about it. I do turn it on when I remember. Every little bit helps, so if you have some spare processing power and want to be part of the cure for some very bad diseases, give it a shot.
D-ton
(Signature tagline has been laid off due to recession)
way to do your civic duty D-ton! i installed the software and i’m running it right now. i’ll be damned if i can see the stats though… i put in 131313 as the team #. do you see me as part of your team?
Right on Nine! Welcome to team 131313 for Safe Mode PC.
Before you show up on the team site, you have to have completed a full fold process. Once you do that, it will upload the stats to the website, give you the credit for it, then download another chunk. Once your name shows up on the link below, you can click your name and see what you have done and your own personal stats and the certificates that you have achieved.
Here is the site stats for our team 131313.
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=131313
Glad to have you aboard!