What is Folding At Home?

A purely scientific research venture from the people at Stanford University, bent on building a greater understanding of how protiens work.

Basically, Stanford ships out work, or work units, to our computers over the internet. Our processors crunch on them, usually for a few days, and sends the results back. So, the more people there are, the faster we can move, and thus, the more research we do!

What is a protein?

Everything! Almost all your body is made out of protein. From connective tissue inside and outside your cells, to the very DNA that makes you special! Enzymes, hormones, you name it, it's a protein. Proteins are how your body's DNA really manifests itself.

Disease and protein. Is there a connection?

You bet! First off, diseases use proteins to attack you, and you use proteins to attack them back! Antibodies are hard at work inside your body, and these are specially designed proteins! Not only that, many diseases are caused by proteins misfolding! Cancer, Alzheimer's, and lots of others.

Why do proteins fold?

Well, all the proteins come off of a long string of RNA, and are therefore begin as 1 long straight string of protein. However, because all the atoms are attracted to the others, as soon as it peels away from the RNA, it snaps into a shape. Their shape makes them a protein! Consider blood. You should think of the protein inside the red blood cell in a certain shape, and these red blood cells "hug" the oxygen. If the protein was messed up and misfolded, it can't hug the oxygen!

I think it's kinda like sign language. Sure, it may be a hand, but the shape of the hand is important! Otherwise, there would be no language!

Same with proteins. And if we could figure out how proteins fold themselves, we'd learn a lot about what causes proteins to mess up, and weaknesses we could use to attack disease. There's millions of possibilities!

Can't you just watch the proteins fold?

Nope, because they fold really, really fast, and they are incredibly small and delicate.

How will my computer help?

A lot of people think that their contribution won't make a difference, or their vote won't count. It's precisely that pessimism that breaks the machine down!

We need you. Every computer helps. Please, make an effort and join us!

Can't a supercomputer fold a protein?

Unfortunately not. Biology has now become the hardest thing to crunch in a computer, because of all the calculations. IBM built the world's fastest computer, Blue Gene, a huge supercomputer that blows away all the others, with a million processors. All for protein folding!

We are more powerful than Blue Gene, and actually, our work is quite complimentary. We're doing some amazing stuff!