Why Folding At Home?

     Really the answer begins by answering another question, ?What is Protein Folding??  A protein is defined as, ?A molecule made up of amino acids that are needed for the body to function properly. Proteins are the basis of body structures such as skin and hair and of substances such as enzymes and antibodies.?  Proteins make up much of what we are and they provide many of the vital functions that are carried out in our bodies everyday.  In order to do the work they do in our bodies they assemble themselves.  Much like a construction worker unpacks his tools at a site, proteins unpack themselves to do their job.  When a protein unpacks his tools incorrectly, this is when things go wrong.  Proteins are at the heart of the discussion when it comes to such diseases as Cystic Fibrosis, Alzheimer?s, and many types of Cancers.  The Stanford Folding At Home project seeks to understand how this process of folding happens in order to better understand what goes wrong and this is where your computer comes in.
The goal of the Folding At Home project (known from now on as FAH) is to build computer simulations of folding patterns by the use of distributed computing.  When you install one of the various clients you are entering into a complicated work collective to achieve this end.  FAH uses your spare CPU time to compute.  When you aren?t doing work, FAH does.  How this works is, you download cores and work units to your computer.  These work units are full of information about specific proteins and the cores direct the way in which the algorithm uses this information.  When the algorithm is done simulating the way that tiny period of time in which the protein is folding, you have finished a Work Unit and that Work Unit is sent back to the Stanford servers to be combined with other Work Units in that same progression.  A tiny link in the folding chain is completed when your Work Unit (WU) is done.  If you?re interested in seeing the list of protein projects currently being worked on, you can find them here.  Stanford has a movie of what a fully finished Protein Project looks like when it?s finished.  It took thousands of CPU hours to produce that one little bit of video and it gives FAH participants an idea of the size of this project and the complex nature of proteins.

The Competitive Animal Within

     But some of us need more than the abstract rewards of helping humankind better itself through science and medicine.  Some of us need fame and glory!  The need to compete is deep and FAH has ways of satisfying this need as well.  Unlike distributed computing systems like SETI, where they simply keep a tally of how many WUs a participate has completed, FAH assigns point values to different projects because of their different sizes and the time it takes to complete them.  So unlike SETI, a WU that takes 20 hours to complete is worth more than a WU that takes only one.  Also, participants can join teams and compete in this fashion as well.  Sudhian?s team is number 10688, for those interested.

How Do I Get Started

     The first step is to download and install a FAH client.  Currently, FAH has clients for the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.  I will be focusing on how you install a Windows client because that is what I run, personally.  However, installing the Mac and Linux versions shouldn?t be much different as they are based on the same basic formats.  There are three types of Windows clients you can install: screen saver, graphical, and command line....

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• The Clients (0 of 2)
• Extras! (0 of 2)