What is folding and why should I fold

So what is this Folding@Home?

Folding@Home is a DIstributed Computing based research project being carried out by Professor Vijay Pande and his group at Stanford University, looking at protein folding.

Its also your chance to make a valuable contribution to science, and have some fun!

So what does that do?

Ok, in English, this project looks at Proteins - vital chemicals needed for life. In our bodies they make up our physical forms, help important chemical reactions take place and keep us alive. For example, in the human stomach, there are many enzymes that help us digest our food, such as amylase. Without these enzymes, digestion would be so slow that we could not survive.

Proteins are also involved in many crippling diseases such as Cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinsons and HIV/AIDs, which is a particularly important reason to participate for some people who have perhaps lost loved ones to one of these diseases. By understanding how these proteins work we may move closer to cures.

Professor Pande and his team, working at an established Academic institution, are hoping that by studying these proteins - specifically how they "fold", when they form the shapes and structures that let them do their job - that they can further research into what problems can be caused when proteins do not fold properly - some of these problems being the mentioned diseases.

So what are they doing then?

The Pandegroup want to simulate protein folding, in order to gain better understanding of the processes involved. But this is no easy task. In order to simulate just a few nanoseconds (1/1,000,000,000th of a second = 1 nanosecond) a huge amount of processing power is needed, power not available in any current supercomputers.

Where is this CPU power going to come from?

The answer is, they need yours. By splitting this work in to hundreds of tiny packets (called Work Units) and having as many people work on a small packet as possible, they hope that they can learn more about these proteins. So, thus was born the Folding@Home project. Volunteers download a small packet of work, and let their PC use its otherwise wasted CPU cycles to work on these small chunks of the puzzle. The program just uses up otherwise wasted CPU cycles, and the work that your PC does in its spare time could provide vital information that could have a huge impact on science.

Where does this involve me?

In order that Pandegroup can gain useful results, they need as many people to help as possible. We need people like you to download and run this program.

Folding@Home only uses otherwise wasted CPU cycles. It does not take CPU cycles away from other programs and will not interfere with anything else the PC is doing.

Folding@Home requires no personal data whatsoever and will not send any personal data to the servers, only completed work that you have done.

Folding@Home will not damage anything on your computer - be it software or hardware.

To add some fun to folding (if science alone isnt enough of a reason to help out) the Pandegroup keep track of statistics - so you can see who has processed how many work units.

People can also join together into teams. Maximum CPU has their own team, team 34060.

So how do I help? You need to go to the thread that it titled F@H Tutorial

So now that you know what it is go to that thread to get started!