What is Protein Folding and How You Can Help

Posted on February 21, 2007
Filed Under Innovation |

Stanford’s chemistry department has a really interesting project that follows the pioneering seti@home initiative. You download a client app to become part of a massive distributed computer that analyzes how proteins fold with the goal of understanding complex diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer.

Folding@Home Distributed Computing: What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? 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.

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