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Mac OS X Client Released For Folding@home

Posted by pudge on from the proteins-you-precious-little-proteins dept.

throwthag writes "There is finally a Mac OS X client for Stanford University's protein folding distributed processing project and I have created a team for all Mac OS X users out there called, appropriately enough, Team MacOS X."

2 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why folding? by Jonny+290 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's got a medical use. And yes, there are other distributed clients for medical use, but make sure that they're for nonprofits (e.g. universities.) A couple of pharmaceutical companies thought it'd be slick to try to get a large number of distributed clients doing work for them for free, while they profit and sit on the cure for AIDS (sorry, off on a tangent there).

    Seti@home is being taken care of nicely, and the encryption breaking DC things are just silly. They *know* that they can crack it given enough time. Shouldn't that be enough of a consolation?

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    Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
  2. Re:Why folding? by jeblucas · · Score: 5, Informative
    Protein folding is the "great problem" of bio-science today. The Human Genome Project is small taters next to the -real- big issue--The Proteome Project.

    Genes are nice, they certainly ~do~ indicate predilictions towards diseases, behaviors etc, but proteisn are the actual workhorses of the body and the actual CAUSE of the diseases etc. The more we understand about proteins, the closer we are to understanding, well, just about everything about us. Read here for a nice intro.

    And folding is the real stinker. We can get the gene that codes for a protein. We can see the little ribosomes chug along and make the protein. And then the protein folds up and that's why it works. If it folds like ~this~ it's normal, all friendly. If it folds like ~that~ it's a prion that convinces other normal proteins to fold up just like it and you die of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.

    Finding some alien radio transmitter sure would be nice, but finding out why folks die from cystic fibrosis might be a better way to spend downtime.

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    blarg.