Re: Please Join Our EliteFitness Folding At Home Join.. Help Find Cures For Diseases..
Okey dokey, let's try this again....
You may know what proteins are; after all, you're made out of them, and a lot of peeps here talk about whether they are getting "complete protein" in their diet. A protein is a long chain molecule, and it's made out of a variety of building blocks, called amino acids. There are only a couple of dozen different aminos, but there are billions and billions of possible combinations, so there are billions of possible proteins. (A "complete protein" is one that provides all the amino acids that your body can't manufacture out of other molecules. Example: A cat will go blind on a vegetarian diet, because it can't make its own taurine.)
Cells make proteins. We figured out, finally, that DNA is basically a list of amino acids in a certain order -- in other words, DNA is the blueprint for a few million different proteins that make a specific living creature. We can "read" DNA well enough to know exactly what proteins it will produce, at least in terms of the amino acid sequences.
But once we figured that out, we discovered that the shape a protein takes is also important to its function -- for example, antibodies are proteins that fit like a key in a lock. Both the antibody and the receptor site it fits into are determined by the physical 3D structure that those two proteins take in the real world. That's a really blatant example, easy to understand -- Tab A goes into Slot B -- but the shape of proteins is important in all sorts of processes that keep you alive.
And it's not obvious just from reading off the list of amino acids what shape the protein will take. It's a complex three-dimensional object.
A big supercomputer crunching for hours and days can figure out the "most likely" form for a protein to take... but not even Stanford can afford a computer that big, and if they did have one, the researchers would probably not be allowed to dedicate it to doing nothing but "folding" calculations. It's important, but there are lots of other projects that can make that claim. Too much demand, too little time.
That's where the "@home" project comes in. The researchers identify proteins that they really NEED to know about. They give the structure and a starting configuration that is physically valid but not the most likely ending shape. The challenge is to look at all the atoms in that molecule and figure out how they would fold themselves to make the most likely, most stable shape. The simulation program has to consider all the atoms and how they influence each other.
"@home" divides up this complex task into small work units and parcels them out to volunteers -- like you. There are literally millions of PCs going to waste displaying flying toasters or playing Solitaire. When you run Folding@home instead of your flying toaster screensaver, your PC requests a "work unit" from Stanford, does a few million calculations and returns the results to Stanford. They combine the results from thousands of volunteers, and the researchers get the same results they'd get from running a humongous billion-dollar computer for only a tiny fraction of the expense.
It's damn smart, and it's also our best hope for finding cures for all sort of diseases. That's the "why." The "how" is easier -- all you have to do is run the thing. If you put our group number (126203) in when you start it up for the first time, we get a little team credit for your efforts. We ought to blow the doors off the other teams out there, hence Kano's disappointment with our showing so far.
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
