rosetta@home
Saving Lives, one computer at a time...
07/10/2006 07:04 PM Categories:
Distributed
Computing
With the recent shakeups at
SETI@home, and apparent reduction of
probability for useful science coming out of that project, I've
reallocated some of my BOINC resources towards another project.
BOINC or Berkeley
Open Infrastructure for
Network Computing allows you to
use your spare computer cycles for different scientific projects
using the same core application platform; making it easier to
contribute to multiple projects and allowing you to move resource
allocation from one to another.
80% of my Distributed Computing resources are now allocated towards Rosetta@home. This project from the University of Washington uses your computer power through the BOINC system to help determine 3-dimensional shapes of proteins. Determining such shapes through protein folding with the "lowest energy state" is the scientific "Holy Grail" of Biomedical science. The University of Washington's focus is to design new proteins that will help fight HIV, Malaria, Anthrax, Cancer, and Alzheimer's (more info here). This research can be applicable to a multitude of other diseases once the protein simulations are effective and proven in clinical trials. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes to this project as part of their anti-Malaria contribution. Unlike SETI@home though, Rosetta's code is not opensource and has not been released to the wild. As such, there are no optimized workers like Crunch3r's Seti workers for SSE-SSE3. In addition, the way it calculates points is also different. According to Dr David Baker regarding the difference between this project and the older Folding@home project at Stanford: "The Rosetta@home project goals are very different from those of Folding@home. The goal of Folding@home, I believe, is to determine how long proteins take to fold, given the sequence of the protein and knowledge of its three dimensional structure. The goal of Rosetta@home is to predict the three dimensional structure from the amino acid sequence."
20% will still be allocated towards SETI@home (I still want to find E.T., or at least some long lost Alien Civilization's last message). Either project can act as each other's backup for CPU cycles if the other project's servers are down. All the points I earn will still be part of Team MacNN under BOINC, Seti, & Rosetta stats.
Read More...
80% of my Distributed Computing resources are now allocated towards Rosetta@home. This project from the University of Washington uses your computer power through the BOINC system to help determine 3-dimensional shapes of proteins. Determining such shapes through protein folding with the "lowest energy state" is the scientific "Holy Grail" of Biomedical science. The University of Washington's focus is to design new proteins that will help fight HIV, Malaria, Anthrax, Cancer, and Alzheimer's (more info here). This research can be applicable to a multitude of other diseases once the protein simulations are effective and proven in clinical trials. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes to this project as part of their anti-Malaria contribution. Unlike SETI@home though, Rosetta's code is not opensource and has not been released to the wild. As such, there are no optimized workers like Crunch3r's Seti workers for SSE-SSE3. In addition, the way it calculates points is also different. According to Dr David Baker regarding the difference between this project and the older Folding@home project at Stanford: "The Rosetta@home project goals are very different from those of Folding@home. The goal of Folding@home, I believe, is to determine how long proteins take to fold, given the sequence of the protein and knowledge of its three dimensional structure. The goal of Rosetta@home is to predict the three dimensional structure from the amino acid sequence."
20% will still be allocated towards SETI@home (I still want to find E.T., or at least some long lost Alien Civilization's last message). Either project can act as each other's backup for CPU cycles if the other project's servers are down. All the points I earn will still be part of Team MacNN under BOINC, Seti, & Rosetta stats.
Read More...
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