Is your computer fighting the AIDS virus?
In the first research effort of its kind (for AIDS) the World Community Grid is devoting its massive computational powers to FightAIDS@Home.
IBM announced Monday that the virtual supercomputer will test thousands of human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) mutations against tens of thousands of chemical compounds. That will help scientists design effective therapies to stop potential drug-resistant viral strains from causing AIDS, Vice President of IBM Global Initiatives Robin Willner said in an interview Monday.
The idea is simple. Home users install a small program on their systems which, during the computers idle moments, compares the effect of different chemical compounds on possible HIV virus mutations. The data is then sent to a central repository, and new mutations and compounds to test are uploaded back to your computer for another round.
Although YOUR computer may only be able to do a small number of comparisons each week, when multiplied by thousands of computers a huge database can be quickly created. This database is invaluable to researchers.
Although there have been a number of similar, very successful projects, the operators of Olson Laboratories decided to switch to World Community Grid for the sizeable power advantage it offers.
After two years with the Entropia computing environment, operators at the institute's Olson Laboratory decided to switch to World Community Grid. They said several features of Entropia did not work for them and newer versions of AutoDock could not be deployed.
... the [World Community] grid's first major set of computations, through the Human Proteome Folding Project, are 99 percent done, according to Willner.
In the year since its launch, the grid performed about 120,000 simulations of protein folding patterns and produced a database for researchers. The work, which would have taken about 100 years for the Institute for Systems Biology's supercomputer to perform, shows scientists how amino acids fold into three-dimensional structures.
The World Community Grid is used only for humanitarian projects, and makes all its scientific data and findings available to the public. In support of the project, IBM donates all the hardware, software and expertise to make the project happen.
Now we can all say we own a supercomputer...or at least a chunk of one.
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