I've been folding for some time now, and i try to do so whenever i can. I know what i am folding for but there are some questions i would like to ask.

Have there been any discovery's made that may help in any way by BOINC users?

If so, where can i vieuw these things?

I think it would be amazing if they would find anything specifically to help cure people. For instance, even to prolong someone's life for a month because of folding would be simply amazing!

And, is it known what kind of calculating power we need to actually find that what we're looking for?
It's probably not known, but with the growing calculating speed of computers, it would be an amazing thought to know what we're looking at in terms of capacities needed.

Thank you for your time!

Basically, yes.

When for instance a new protein is designed a synthetic gene has to be ordered to make it. Rosetta is successfully used to predict if a candidate will fold into the desired structure for treating a target disease or not. In science every discovery helps, even discovering that you're wrong. By knowing a structure was never a candidate no further time and money will be wasted on it.

Of course many candidates also turn out to be 'duds' but by eliminating a lot of them early on these will be tested and eliminated a lot earlier leading to treatments earlier than the traditional methods. The algorithm is also getting refined by using known structures to make predictions quicker and more accurate.

So don't stop crunching those WUs.

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