Research: Rosetta@home
People Power
Eric Hand
Nature #466
8/4/2010
The science journal Nature reports on the project/game Rosetta@home. Based on the original 1999 project SETI@home which allowed multiple computers to be amassed to sift through radio telescope data in the search for extraterritorial life, the Folding@home project was created to allow individuals computers, along with the Playstation 3 to evaluate “how a linear chain of amino acids curls up into a three-dimensional shape that minimizes the internal stresses and strains-presumably the protein’s natural shape.”
The project was originally started in 2005 as Rosetta@home, and by way of improvements suggested by users, the founder, David Baker, was able to craft a game called Foldit with the help of computer scientist colleagues. And as published in the article Predicting Protein Structures With A Multiplayer Online Game, Baker has shown that the best players are folding proteins better than the computer was doing alone.
It is believed that this is due to the fact that computers have to run fairly linearly in that if a protein has hundreds of amino acids, it will have to run thousands of computations, whereas humans ability for spatial manipulation have an intuitive ability to solve difficult problems.
The immediate future of this technology seems bright. But at least one scientist in the article feels like the glow will eventually wane and the technology will no longer be as compelling. At that point in time he believes citizens involved in the project will begin to feel used. And that projects like these will be forced to pay users.
You can find the full article here.
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