PC players are being asked to contribute some of their computing power to an effort researching cancer, in addition to diseases including the novel coronavirus and Alzheimer’s.There have now been more than 156,000 confirmed cases internationally as the coronavirus continues to spread, with over 5,800 supported deaths after COVID-19 diagnoses.
In addition to trying not to transmit the virus by frequently washing their hands and self-isolating should they show any symptoms, PC players may also contribute to cutting edge study.
By installing applications that run at the background of the computer while they continue to use it for different activities, Suggest, the gamers could be helping develop a treatment for the virus.
The [email protected] ([email protected]) project is a distributed computing study program that uses the idle resources of thousands of volunteers’ personal computers to mimic the molecular dynamics of protein folding.
Some of the most effective equipment which normal individuals have to hand are graphics processing units (GPUs), a specific sort of computer chip intended for gaming.
GPUs are capable of doing a lot of mathematical operations quickly, such as the many surgeries required to simulate the environment inside cells.
The simulations are essential because protein folding is one of the regions in biology. The molecules fold into structures that influence chemical reactions in aggregate, and by extension and in human cells, therefore the body.
Even though scientists have sequenced the complete human genome, which is the blueprint for each of the proteins within the human body, the arrangement itself does not explain how proteins carry on a particular shape and perform their functions, whether a receptor or an antibody.
The project, based on the Pande Laboratory at Stanford University, and led by Dr. Greg Bowman, is exploring the implications of what happens when this fold goes wrong in diseases ranging from diabetes and cancer to Alzheimer’s, and today COVID-19.
