Jiming Chen wrote:An issue with current pesticides is their lack of ability to target specific harmful killer weeds (i.e. Striga), meaning they harmfully affect the crops and surrounding environment. However, the reason we are studying these plant signaling proteins in detail is that understanding how these protein work will help design more specific control strategies, i.e. things that will keep Striga from growing without harming anything else around.
shukla wrote:The results would eventually impact 100 million farmers in Africa. The reason why we don’t have a solution for this problem till now is that none of the big agriculture companies have monetary incentives to solve this problem.
Folding@Home beta tester since 2002. Folding Forum moderator since July 2008.
shukla wrote:The results would eventually impact 100 million farmers in Africa. The reason why we don’t have a solution for this problem till now is that none of the big agriculture companies have monetary incentives to solve this problem.
making pesticide that specific must make loadds of money surely?
Lamberto Vitali wrote:well people choosing to boycott folding projects because they have something do with russia is on topic
Why are you talking about Russia?
This project is about sub-Saharan Africa.
gunnarre mention it, i thought the objection to non-covid work here was a russian objection, like going on with sidock (a slovenian-russian covid project)
I don't know exactly why he is talking about Ukraine, maybe he is not aware that this project is about Africa and was making a more general reflection about food?
Here, as far as I know, there is no link, neither with Russia, nor with Ukraine.
Thor wrote:I don't know exactly why he is talking about Ukraine, maybe he is not aware that this project is about Africa and was making a more general reflection about food?
Here, as far as I know, there is no link, neither with Russia, nor with Ukraine.
And I never talked about Covid.
Just medical WUs and agri-food WUs.
helping africa with food is only a good thing, i used to do african rainfaiul project for community grid, but they have tech difficulty
I believe the poster (who mentioned the current conflict) was simply making the point that with global supplies of wheat likely to take a big hit with two major harvests disrupted that this type of research whilst not medical is actually important ... but this thread is about the concerns some people wish to air around the inclusion of such a a topic within FaH without any prior indication of this non medical focus.
Whilst many folders possibly including some of those who are raising concerns about the lack of communication understand the aims/goals of the research and may be happy to contribute there is a certain amount of disquiet as to the lack of any announcement around what on the surface appears to be a new direction ... If people can keep reasonably to that topic then this thread will hopefully not stray into areas that might get the thread locked.
If one has no concerns over these wus then this thread shouldn't be of much interest - it is simply a place where folders who have some concerns can post them and maybe get their concerns read by FaH.
Forum Threads are bought to the attention of and read by FaH - There are many examples of posts from FaH members responding to questions/requests ... Many of the researchers who post information here will see posts and pass them on to those who make the key decisions ... This thread has already been highlighted to the researcher behind this work ... Threads/posts are very rarely deleted and only when the Forum Admins/Mods (who are volunteers) feel they have breached acceptable standards and to the best of my knowledge that only happens as a last resort.
So having been in touch with the researcher I have permission to quote the following which was the explanation given to me when I queried that this was a step away from the traditional FaH causes. I had raised the concern that for many folders FaH has been about supporting medical/disease research and is marketed on the web as such and that these projects are a step away from that. For me the following indicates this research, whilst utilising plants, is very relevant to drug design and traditional FaH causes.
"If the concern is primarily about the projects not being relevant to medical research, one thing worth pointing out is that a fundamental question this work is trying to answer is why very similar proteins can interact very differently with the same molecules. This phenomenon is not well understood and certainly of interest in the design of drugs to treat various diseases. It’s often desired to design drug molecules that can bind to specific proteins involved in diseases without binding to similar proteins and causing unwanted side effects, so a better fundamental understanding why similar proteins can have different affinities for the same molecule is very important. It just so happens that there are these proteins in plants that are 1) an excellent model for studying how very similar proteins interact very differently with a molecule, which again is something of general interest in molecular biology, both medically focused and otherwise 2) also relevant to food security."
Last edited by Neil-B on Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lamberto, I don't know if you're trying to troll or if you don't understand what the topic is about but it would be nice if you read the topic again from the beginning and if you go and insult people somewhere else.
Even if I would have liked an answer directly from the f@h staff, thanks for the answer Neil-B
