Help find more effective cures by folding DNA @ home
- From: "Bill" <g-e-e@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Apr 2006 12:35:26 -0700
So what is folding?
- Folding@home is a distributed computing project that is run by
Stanford University.
What is distributed computing?
- Well you see many big universities research certain things and a lot
of these things require computers to find out information for them.
Huge super-computers are very costly and they are not always the best
way to do things. So universities like Stanford decide to get some help
from other people. What they did is they made a client that people
could download to use on their home computer that would help them out
with their research. The way this client works is when you are
connected to the internet the client will download a work unit for you,
then your computer will process it over a period of hours or days, then
it will send it back when it is done. It is very easy process and
almost anyone can do it.
What is protein folding?
- Protein folding is what your computer is doing when it downloads a
client to process. Everyone is made up of proteins; they are the
building blocks of life according to the instructions of your DNA.
However it's not as simple as reading off the recipe from the DNA and
constructing the protein's molecular chain. It's the *shape* that that
big complicated molecular chain naturally takes that determines how it
interacts with your cells and your body. Knowing how proteins fold is
considered to be the "Holy Grail of molecular biophysics" and this
knowledge has great potential. When scientist can figure out how
proteins work and why they do what they do, this could lead to many
great scientific advances like the cures for certain diseases.
1. Will folding affect my PC's performance?
The answer is no, there was a recent study done on the F@H program and
how it can affect your computer's speed while it is running and it has
been proven that there is little to no affect. That study can be found
here (http://tech-report.com/etc/2002q4/foldingimpact/index.x?pg=1)
2. Where can I get the folding@home program?
You can download the program here
(http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html). They have it available for
the 3 major operating systems and the word is that they are working on
various unix versions also.
3. What information do I enter when I finish downloading?
If the box does not pop up when you are done installing you will want
to right click your F@H icon in your system tray and then click on
configure. Then you will change your team to number 49385 and pick a
user name. At the bottom of the download page there is a box that you
can check to see if your user name that you want is already being used.
If you are using a console version or a service install, you will need
to edit the client.cfg file to provide the client with the information
that it needs.
4. Which client should I download?
Most people would agree that the best one is the graphical client.
Download this and let it run in the system tray without the graphic
part open. When your comptuer has to use its processor cycles to help
put images on the screen and that slows it down from the folding
itself. There are also custom made service installs and bootable linux
cd's that you can use for means of folding too. I prefer the service
install myself.
5. What is protein folding?
All that can be found here (http://folding.stanford.edu/science.html)
6. When I am not using my computer it is turned off, so I wouldn't be
much of a help anyway.
This is not true, F@H is running all the time and adjusts itself so it
will use all of your processor that the other programs allow. So if you
are just browsing the internet, that takes very little processor speed
and folding@home would be working at near 100%.
.
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