im a computer guy and i was wondering if schizophrenia is always benifited from protein folding. Right now im running a couple of boinks, without alot of stars n junk like chess.... I plan on buying another computer. And if you can answer my question i would buy more probably.

Schizophrenia seems to be related to both proteins and genes.

A Google search found these:

http://www.diagnosticpathology.org/content/1/1/11

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1538632

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118672094/abstract

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mksg/acp/2006/00000114/00000006/art00007

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17087792

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18255274

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16973280

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118626394/abstract

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00001027/

Not clear yet if protein folding is involved. However, it seems to cause changes in the amount of protein TCP-1, which is involved in protein folding.

You could always ask some schizophrenia patients, if you know any, to try the Foldit game and see if it helps them.

Proteins are used in the body in too many ways to enumerate. "Protein folding" is the term used to describe the shape the proteins take or the act of forming their shape. So, all proteins are "effected by folding". What Rosetta@home is working on is predicting that shape. And genes are comprised of amino acids, just like proteins are. So as you learn about proteins, you learn something about genes and their role in the body.

If I hand you a series of plumbing fittings and pipes, and tell you the order to assemble them (i.e. the amino acid sequence) you still do not have enough information to tell me what the completed project will look like. You know there is a 90 degree elbow at this point, but you do not know which direction it heads off. Now picture all the plumbing in a 6 story apartment building, only you aren't told when handed all the pieces that it goes to a 6 story apartment building. It is a massive undertaking. And that is just one protein out of 100s of thousands.

Chemistry is able to provide the amino acid sequence with existing methods. But actually determining the shape of the protein they comprise is still a massive challenge to mankind. So, you can fairly quickly determine the parts that comprise bird flu viral proteins, but this knowledge doesn't help you to cure or immunize against bird flu. To disable a bird flu cell, you are going to have to know exactly what it looks like, and exactly what will bind to it. And so you need to accurately predict both the shape of the bird flu virus, and the shape of a drug to target that.


Some researchers have argued that schizophrenia is caused by a virus that attacks the brain. ...and any virus has a protein signature that can be targetted. But there are as many possible targeting proteins are their are ways of putting together all the plumbing. And only a few of the trillions of combinations will have the desired effect. If we can model it all in a computer and narrow it down to a list of 10 or 20 drug candidates, then existing science can take it from there to determine efficacy, toxicity, side effects, etc.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

More on schizophrenia:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=12478479

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics

More on schizophrenia:

http://health.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-schizophrenia-ess.html

It looks like there's a zinc-binding protein related to schizophrenia, so the new capability of handling zinc-binding proteins should help schizophrenia research:

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=4451&nowrap=true#57218

The best I can tell, the GPUGRID project is also doing work related to schizophrenia, but requires a recent Nvidia card to do the work on instead of the CPU. Not very easy to find information on this there, though.

http://www.gpugrid.net/

You may want to look there to determine what Nvidia cards are suitable, and whether you have to upgrade your BOINC version and Nvidia driver before you can participate there.

You might as well still let Rosetta@home give you workunits for the CPU, though, even though these will be somewhat less related to schizophrenia.

And genes are comprised of amino acids, just like proteins are.

Just being a pedant, but for clarity that's not quite right (as I'm sure MS already knows!). A DNA sequence (i.e. a gene) is translated from DNA bases into chains of amino acids, which fold to form proteins/enzymes ;)

Otherwise I agree 100% with what MS said! HBO - if you can get more computer power for Rosetta then it's all welcome and will be put to good use ;)

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