Standford University is researching protein folding and needs your help. Protein folding? Yes, that's right, protein folding. I'm not too clear on the specifics myself, but protein folding is linked to disease. From the Standford website:
"Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.Folding @ Home is a distributed computing project that utilizes the unused CPU cycles on your PC, Mac, Linux computer or Playstation 3 to help find the cause for improper protein folding.Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes."
Bottom line: Folding @ Home might lead to cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's & Parkinson's.
I've installed the software on four computers and haven't noticed any real performance hit while the calculations run in the background. In any case, I feel pretty good knowing that my computers are being used for a noble cause. I urge everyone to download the software and start folding those proteins!
By the way, my Donator username is Toyman and I've been donating my time under the team number 57391.
