How can you help cancer research? There are lots of ways you can volunteer your time, you can donate money, you can take part in research trials, but here is one you might not have thought of, you can use your computers free memory to help scientists study protein folding.
To do this you need to have a new computer (2-3 years old) at least a Pentium 3, with a broadband internet connection. You also need to be confident enough to download and install a program called “Folding@home” from the internet and alter your anti-virus settings.
What does the program do? When you are not using your computer it uses your computer memory to work out how a protein folds. The more computers the more data can be analysed, Folding@home use hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world. This is called “distributed computing” on of the first examples of this was the SETI@home project which was used to search for Extra terrestrial life.
You can read more about the science behind Folding@home. Protein misfolding is implicated in a range of cancers as well as a whole host of other diseases like Huntingtons and Alzheimers. The program runs on Windows, Linux, Macs and Playstation 3.
This YouTube video explains the history of Folding@home.
Have you taken part in a distributed computing project? Do you think it’s a good idea?
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