Aegion sent us a note to say that since early this year, Arstechnica’s ownTeam Stir Fryhas “folded” over one billion protein structures as a participant inThe Distributed Folding Project. This impressive number is a tribute to both the processing power and enthusiasm that arstechnica members have brought to the project.
The goal of this project is to use a distributed computing architecture to simulate the outcome of the process of protein folding for an amino-acid chain with a particular sequence. While the amino-acid sequence of a particular protein can now be determined due to work such as the Human Genome Project, determining what the actual shape of a protein once it is actually inside a living organism is far more difficult. The Hydrophobic Effect causes proteins’ amino acid chains to fold into complex three-dimensional structures in a process that is incredibly computationally costly to simulate. The Distributed Folding Project attempts to predict the outcome of such protein folding through a complex computer algorithm to avoid the computational burden of directly simulating the actual protein folding process. An additional computer algorithm then sorts through the thousands of protein structures predicted by an individual participant’s computer and determines which protein prediction is the most accurate one. This approach allows the project to accurately predict the protein conformations of previously unknown proteins in matter of weeks instead of the years it could potentially take to do so utilizing traditional techniques. This work could potentially have major implications for treating a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and AIDS. Additional information about the science behind the project can be foundright here.
