No Starch Please

Folding has been a project of mine for a while now. It all started for me back in April or May of 2001 with Stanford's Genome project. Stanford had a couple of relatively new projects out that took a friggin' huge math problem and broke it down into little bits that could be easily downloaded and worked on by individuals and then sent back. This technique did wonders by effectively giving the Stanford research team a super computer for their research at a small fraction of the cost. I worked on the Genome@Home project, as did thousands of others, until it ended. Upon the completion of the Genome project I switched to Folding and I've been working on it ever since. The Folding@Home project is ongoing and currently there are probably somewhere around 200000 active Folders.

A little background first. Proteins make up everything about us. Everything in our body relates in some way to proteins. They make up our bones, hair and cells. They make up the antibodies that fight our internal battles. They also play a starring role in all the chemical reactions that drive our bodies to do what they do. They are important. Before they can perform any of these tasks though they go through a process where they put themselves into a specific shape for the task. This process is known as "folding".

Certain diseases, Alzheimer's and others, are believed to be caused when the proteins "misfold". By simulating the folding process we can learn what causes the proteins to fold correctly and incorrectly. This will hopefully lead to future cures. Progress has been made, but we're not even close yet.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in take a look here. The program runs in the background and only uses spare computer time so you won't even know it's there. It will benefit if you can leave your computer running 24/7, but just running the program while the computer is on is just fine. If you are running this at home be aware that your computers cpu will be being worked 100%. This may cause heat issues with less robust systems. You may also see an increase in the electric bill. I run six systems 24/7 at home currently and I figure each costs me about $8 each per month. That's six crappy lunches out that I skip each month. Also, if you choose to do this make sure it's on your computer or a computer that you have explicit permission to run it on.

Fold On!