http://www.grid.org/projects/hpf/
Putting the Human Genome to Work
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, one of the greatest challenges facing scientists is to find functions for all of the proteins that are encoded in the Human Genome. When human protein structures are known, scientists can use them to research disease treatments and cures.
Today only a fraction of the 30,000 Human Genome proteins have known structures and functions. Being able to predict the structure of ever protein in an organism will contribute to our overall understanding of how those predicted proteins interact with the organism as a system. Can you imagine trying to fix a car or a machine knowing the function of only 30% of the components? That is the situation that biomedical and biological researchers, to their credit, operate in. Thus, anything that can shed light on these mystery proteins is highly valuable to the field of biology and medicine.
Making the Impossible Possible
Predicting the protein structures based on known Human Genome sequence data requires powerful software tools and large amounts of compute time. For example:
* Examining the entire human genome for instance could require up to 1,000,000 years of computational time on an up-to-date PC.
* Using a commercial 1000 node cluster would require 50 years and, while faster, would still be impractical.
To have an immediate scientific impact, completing an entire prediction run for the human genome would ideally take less than a year. Before the existence of Grid.org this project wasn't thought possible -- now, the project is on its way to being completed.
United Devices believes the Human Proteome Folding Project is the most important life science project we’ve ever tackled. If you're already a grid.org member, a portion of your computing power will be donated to support this groundbreaking project.
If you're a new volunteer, we encourage you to join the project through World Community Grid (sponsored by IBM and powered by United Devices technology) which will be running the Human Proteome Folding Project in cooperation with grid.org. This project wouldn’t be possible without IBM's vision and continuing support of grid technology. Please support World Community Grid and the Human Proteome Folding Project by joining today!
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