Welcome
to the Team Snekse
Folding@Home Information Page
The Folding@Home goal: To understand protein folding, protein aggregation, and related diseases
What are proteins and why do they "fold"? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease.
What does Folding@Home do? Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease.
How can you help? You can help our project by downloading and running the Folding@Home client software. Our algorithms are designed such that for every computer that joins the project, we get a commensurate increase in simulation speed. In short, when you're not using your computer, the Folding@Home software will crunch data and send back the results the next time you're online.
Still have questions? You can try finding your answer
in the FAQ's
or visit the Folding@Home website at http://folding.stanford.edu/.
TeamSnekse Team Number: 13625
