Join TeamCFC saving the World HERE!

[Abaddon]

Did you know you could help cure cancer, by doing virtually nothing at all?

Many of your fellow members on CFC already do!

You probably have heard the concept: A little program runs in the background of your computer, only taking whatever spare power there is. It uses this power to play with proteins. The results it gets are sent back to the Folding@home people who use it in medical research.

Collectively we do what a zillion dollar computer could. Therefore diverting funds back where it should be spent- on the research, not the equipment.

You dont need a powerful PC, The program carefully monitors how much processing power is available. You will not experience slow downs because of it.

There is no malicious spyware or anything involved within the program

The official Website


TeamCFC's stats!​

From the Folding@Home website:

Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases

What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project -- people from through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.

Folding@Home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems thousands to millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Alzheimer's Disease
Cancer
Huntington's Disease
Osteogenesis Imperfecta
Parkinson's Disease
Ribosome & antibiotics

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To contribute to the statistics for this team, put the number 47958 in the team field
(right-click to configure a client program)

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Well done to those who have finished folding projects! Kudos to:

Team members
Rank
(within team) User Score WU
1 IglooDude 27012 161
2 VRWCAgent 14372 110
3 Speedo 12072 53
4 Jonathan 4035 36
5 Radioactive_Monkey 3844 16
6 lost_civantares 3273 25
7 King_Alexander 3129 13
8 Godwynn 2419 17
9 Louis_Rogerson 2187 15
10 ironduck 2074 26
11 msappir 2065 18
12 snuk 2020 17
13 Till 1584 11
14 Illusion13 1507 11
15 betazed 1331 15
16 Chukchi_Husky 1114 9
17 Simon_Eriksson 1072 10
18 Furiey 1019 8
19 Goldfish 962 4
20 Elephant 960 4
21 roy 939 9
22 Johan_Bage 930 11
23 Lostciv_antares 813 7
24 Sophie_378 592 10
25 Taliesin 499 5
26 colony 380 4
27 WildWeazel 374 4
28 Simon_Seddon 342 2
29 Colone_here 306 2
30 azadi.1 286 7
31 Mathilda 286 2
32 Nicholas_Stokes 264 2
33 Abaddon 252 2
34 Radagaisus 241 1
35 sysyphusCanada 179 2
36 Noldodan 179 2
37 MjM 170 3
38 Masquerouge 153 1
39 Rik_Meleet 136 1
40 Truronian 118 3
41 Newbie101 103 2
42 Aphex_Twin 48 1
43 Louis_Rogerson 46 1
44 toh6wy 46 1
45 tylermenssen 41 1
46 Ummmmmmm 28 1

​

 

[BCLG100]

Think im on like my 3rd one now not sure

 

[Perfection]

There, I jopined your stupid team you poopyheads.

 

[Abaddon]

HAHA! i win .Poopyheads indeed

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I only had one problem with the programme. Certain games I play that go full screen go back to desktop as soon as it does go full screen, so I turn it off for then. No other problems.

 

[Godwynn]

I only had one problem with the programme. Certain games I play that go full screen go back to desktop as soon as it does go full screen, so I turn it off for then. No other problems.

F@H has compatability problems I hear, it happens to me so whenever I play my games I turn off F@H.

 

[ironduck]

And here we are on the big stats page thingy - we just broke into top 2000 which should make the resident geeks happy

http://fahstats.com/?col=3&offset=1751

 

[IglooDame]

And here we are on the big stats page thingy - we just broke into top 2000 which should make the resident geeks happy

http://fahstats.com/?col=3&offset=1751

Natch - for whatever reason, their line numbers (which we're into the 2000 on) are lower than the rankings. I think we're still around 2100.

 

[lost_civantares]

I told one of my computers the wrong user name! (lostciv_antares instead of lost_civantares), and it was one of the more productive computers too!

 

[Abaddon]

@Lost- thats a pity, even if you change the name now in config we cant alter those in the team results.

#cough remember guys, we wern't going to be geeky this time lol... were trying to get more people to join up!

 

[Rik Meleet]

Signed up.

 

[IglooDame]

I told one of my computers the wrong user name! (lostciv_antares instead of lost_civantares), and it was one of the more productive computers too!

"Was"? You need help fixing it?

 

[ironduck]

Welcome Rik Meleet - a snowman for you

(oh, and we can be a little geeky, but it would be nice with some cool protein folding articles methinks)

 

[Masquerouge]

ah. Signed up too. The team thing is a stroke of marketing genius

 

[ironduck]

ah. Signed up too. The team thing is a stroke of marketing genius

And a snowman for you!

 

[Abaddon]

(oh, and we can be a little geeky, but it would be nice with some cool protein folding articles methinks)

ISMB 2001: Why protein folding is cool

spoilered for non-geeks

Spoiler :

Lorrie LeJeune
Jul. 22, 2001 11:19 AM

ISMB 2001 -- the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology -- is in full swing this week at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark. For those of you who've never been to Copenhagen, Tivoli is a combination of amusement park, public gardens, and food hall. The park was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century, so it has a kind of other-world, other-time feel to it. At quiet moments during the talks you can hear kids screaming as the roller coaster rumbles by. If you step outside the conference hall you see young couples, and mothers pushing baby prams (the old-fashioned kind with four big wheels and a spring suspension), and families, complete with kids and grandparents. All of Copenhagen is here enjoying a summer's day, unaware of the 1,300 slightly geeky biologists talking about proteomics and gene sequence analysis not 20 yards away.
The first keynote was given on Sunday by Christopher Dobson, a decidely un-geeky researcher from Oxford University in the U.K. Chris's eloquent and thoughtful presentation on protein folding and its potential impact on the disease process was, in my opinion, the epitome of a keynote. Hours later I'm still thinking about what he said, what it means, and why biology is such a fascinating science. At a meeting like ISMB it's easy to get caught up in the scientific detailia and lose sight of the big picture. Why does bioinformatics exist? Not for its own sake, but to help answer such questions as, why do proteins fold and what happens when they don't?


Here's an example. After a protein molecule is synthesized by the cell's ribosomal machinery, it folds up into a very complex configuration. The chemistry of the molecule affects how it folds, but exactly why it folds is one of the big, open questions in science. So what happens when genetic coding for a protein goes a little wrong? Let's say a genetic disorder affects how your body codes for and synthesizes a protein called alpha-1 antitrypsin. The protein is miscoded, it folds incorrectly, and eventually, you wind up with liver disease.

But how does it happen?

As a result of research in his lab, Christopher has found that the folding patterns of certain proteins that are left to age in high concentrations are somehow changed. They begin to aggregate and form a new kind of molecular structure. As it turns out, this new structure is toxic, and often causes the cell to die. The implication is that as a protein ages, it begins to break down. It's an interesting parallel to the fact that as our bodies age, our biological systems begin to break down.

So why might some proteins cause disease by aggregation? It's likely the biology of the system that's to blame, not the gene sequence. As the body produces proteins in higher and higher concentrations due to genetic misfire, the proteins themselves trigger failure of the biological control mechanisms that prevent aggregation in the first place. The cytotoxic (cell death) effect of aggregated proteins could be a bodily defense mechanism (the errant cell dies before it can reproduce), but if enough cells die, you have another problem. I've simplified the science (and I hope I've simplified it correctly), but the end result is a fascinating glimpse into how a biological system works, and how it breaks down.

Christopher Dobson's resarch may give us some new insights into how genetics, protein chemistry, and aging are related, but much more examination is needed to prove his hypotheses. And if they are proven, yet more effort will go into looking for a solution to the problems they uncover. The tools and techniques of bioinformatics may help us handle all the data, and perhaps offer some insights into possible solutions, but not before basic biological research shows us how systems such as protein folding work.

The point of this long story is is that bioinformatics and biological research exist together. They're two sides of the same coin, and one is of no use without the other.

 

[BCLG100]

Do i get a protein even though i joined awhile ago?

 

[ironduck]

I don't have any proteins to spare, but here's a snowman

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

I only had one problem with the programme. Certain games I play that go full screen go back to desktop as soon as it does go full screen, so I turn it off for then. No other problems.

Uh, just curious, but what games?

Do you need to be hooked up to the internet in order to have this, this, strange program do whatever it is that it does? If so, then I can't, I'm a dial-upper and we have only one phone line.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Age of Mythology and SimCity 4 so far.