Folding Forum

Hello Everyone!

My name is Mitchell Hynes, and I recently won a regional science fair with my project called "Protein Folding with Computers", and I showcased what folding was and how it was so important. I have the honour of participating in the Canada Wide Science Fair in May. I have entered in the 'Innovation / Discovery' section and I thought maybe some of you guys in the folding community would like to say how important this research is, and what it means to you. Your response will be put on display for many people to view at my stand. It has to be relatively short, something like two or three paragraphs so I can put a few of these up together.

If you want to learn more about the CWSF, their site is at cwsf . youthscience . ca

Looking forward to your replies!

Why fold? To find better treatments and cures for diseases that afflict everyone.

If the average family size is 4 people, and we know Cancer kills 1 in 4 people, then someone very close to you could really use your help. And who knows, the life you save by folding may be your own.

And anyone with a brain is at risk to develop Alzheimer's. It kills 1 in 8 people, but affects more than twice that many. 1 in 3 senior citizens die while also suffering from some form of dementia.

The financial toll of caring for both types of diseases is estimated to exceed $1 Trillion by 2050. I'd rather pay a little now and hopefully avoid that later on.

Thanks allot for the reply, going on the board.

And I'm not like those politicians who make up statistics to bolster whatever lie of the day they're telling at the time. Any of the Cancer and Alzheimer's organizations online have that data. Links available upon request.

Folding at Home (F@H) is basic, "behind the scenes" scientific research -- the kind that is not highly paid, or "in vogue", or highlighted on the nightly news. It is complex number-crunching of the type best done by computers rather than by people and pencils and paper. The number-crunching is SO complex that hours or days of computer calculations shows what MIGHT happen in a few nanoseconds in the life of a protein molecule! That is why there are so many computers working -- and NEEDED -- on the project. The power of hundreds of thousands of PCs, working on one piece of the puzzle at a time, exceeds the power of even the world's most powerful "supercomputer". The generosity of all those PC owners, who pay for the computers and electricity to run them, make the project possible.

It is important, though, because so many follow-on projects, clinical studies, and discoveries will use F@H results and other papers as the foundation for their work. F@H isn't "flashy", but our children and grandchildren will benefit from its discoveries.

ecumene wrote:Thanks allot for the reply, going on the board.

Thanks. But in hindsight, I only answered half of your question, the part about why I fold. Fortunately jrweiss filled the bigger answer. FAH is about research and discovery in to how some of the smallest parts of the human body function. Functions we don't fully understand yet going on inside our own bodies. FAH is about discovery as much as it is to eventually help people. And all the results are published openly for anyone to use to help any kind of research progress. My small gift to science and future generations.

Distributed computing projects have always been fascinating to me. The idea of putting unused resources (processor cycles on my p.c.) to use to accomplish valuable goals just made a lot of sense. Combining my small amount of processing power with that of thousands of other users to produce a super computer is a brilliant concept.

My first distributed processing project was SETI at home. After some time contributing to that project I became aware of Folding at Home. When I learned that Stanford was doing research to help fight Alzheimer's, I switched my computer over to FAH, and I've remained here for several years. Alzheimer's is such a terrible and frightening disease. To think that my donations might contribute to helping overcome this disease makes me feel good. Donating my unused computer resources to help fight Alzheimer's and other diseases just seems like the right thing to do. It gives me a real sense of satisfaction.

I am not quite sure whether your qualitative survey is intending to help you establish why protein folding is so important, why F@H research is important or why F@H is felt important enough for contributors to invest time and treasure. All 3 are interesting topics.
Protein folding is an important biological process, but I assume this is not quite what you meant. F@H and other research into protein folding and misfolding holds the promise of understanding this process and perhaps finding treatments for disease related to this process, here the F@H homepage has excellent explanations. Citizen research and why distributing computing actually works, eg why do I spend my time and treasure on this is an even more interesting question although perhaps more sociological in scope the impact on science quite substantial.