For anyone who would like to be more actively involved in helping to stop the spread of coronavirus, a distributed computing project at Stanford University might be the answer. This opportunity comes during a time when researchers and governments across the world are struggling to contain the coronavirus outbreak, named Covid-19.
The virus has already claimed over 3,200 lives with more than 90,000 confirmed cases across 64 countries. Coronavirus has had such an impact, and especially in China, that it is now having a direct effect on different industries. With the virus spreading fast, research institutions around the world have been working overtime to come up with potential life-saving vaccines and therapies. This is where the use of a distributed computer network could help.
Folding@Home is an open-science project aimed at simulating protein folding, computational drug design, and more. By studying protein folding, researchers attempt to find proper treatment methods or drug designs for diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer's, Dengue Fever and syndromes, like SARS, caused by coronavirus. The Stanford project helps researchers aiming to cure these diseases through the use of complex computer simulations of proteins. However, this typically requires a considerable amount of computational power, which many institutions don't have.
FAH researchers are pooling the unused power of idle CPUs of volunteers. Anyone with an internet connection and a computer can sign up for the project by downloading the FAH software from the website and then selecting the disease that they wish to contribute help towards. The software (available for Windows, MacOS and Linux) will draw power from the CPUs when not in use and have it sent to the Folding@home consortium. In the case of coronavirus project, the FAH team aims to study the shape of the viral spike protein that is key to causing the lung infection. The project will look at how the spike proteins change, and what alternate shapes they take, in order to develop a therapeutic antibody that blocks the spike protein from binding to the lung cells, preventing the infection.
This is not the first time a digital solution with a global reach has been used for the fight against coronavirus. The World Health Organisation recently took to TikTok to inform teenagers about the virus and educate them on public health precautions to stop it from spreading further. Advising of the outbreak has become so common, that even Tinder has started warning users to keep a 'social distance' during public gatherings.
Source: Folding@home
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