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muffler dragon

Bien. Bien chiludo.
Thought this was cool.

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-161920724.html

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
he exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors. Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.
Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.
This is where Foldit comes in.
Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
cont.
 
muffler dragon;1995600; said:

Stanford has been doing the same thing since 2000, and the combined computing power is over 7 petaflops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

I have been doing folding@home for a while. It's not really a game. It just uses your computer power to do computations. Both the CPU and GPU can be used. It just runs in the background. If anyone is interested, EVGA gives you up to $10 credit a month for folding. Of course at this point you need a pretty powerful computer to get to the $10 a month mark (I do every now and then, but use a 2600k CPU), and of course it can only be used for EVGA products.
 
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Yeah, pretty sure google had that little toolbar and folding... episode a while ago.


When my machine wasn't in use I ran it in the background constantly. Did that for a couple years. Kind of forgot about it. Might just go back to it now - its a great cause. And no, has nothing to do with any type of gaming.
 
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