I'd be interested to know how, scientifically speaking, this project compares and contrasts with Predictor@Home which to me as a physicist seems to be working in pretty much the same area.

Outside of BOINC there are also a number of protein structure distributed computing projects. Again, from a scientific angle, how far are you guys doing the same, and what makes you different?

There are other threads on the number crunching board about how good this project is at communication -- and I tend to agree with those points, but that is not what I am asking -- in this thread please focus on scientific areas of similarity & difference. Thanks a lot,

River~~

Predictor at home is developing methods to predict a folded protien from a genome sequence. They have entered thier best algorithums in the CASP competion on a number of occasions. There goal is to predict an actual native structure from a sequence. They will in time open up there system to the scientific community so other researchers can make structural predictions of sequences of interest to them.

Folding at home on the other hand wants to take a protien sequence and fold it up microsecond by microsecond studing the actual process a protien uses to become a functional structure. THIS takes enormous computing power and is want IBM orginaly concieved Blue Gene to do. Thier goal is to break the millisecond barriar.

Because of the enormus computing power and time required to fold just one small sequence. Most people in the field bypass the folding and just develope ways to match a sequence with a possible structure. In time they hope to take a genome and have a matched protome.

In rosettas case it does what predictor doses but better according to the CASP competitions....but rosseta also goes beyond the structure prediction to actual protien design and docking studys.

Which are very important in gene thearpy, vaccines and drug discovery.

The goals of rosetta at home are to improve the structure prediction and apply the knowledge to diseases as in new drugs, vaccines and cell thearpys. We will be crunching both long terms benefits, better prediction. And, Short term goals, disease study and possible vaccines etc.

Hope this helps it is much easier to explain using the jargon then trying to use non jargon....cheers

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I'd be interested to know how, scientifically speaking, this project compares and contrasts with Predictor@Home which to me as a physicist seems to be working in pretty much the same area.

Outside of BOINC there are also a number of protein structure distributed computing projects. Again, from a scientific angle, how far are you guys doing the same, and what makes you different?

There are other threads on the number crunching board about how good this project is at communication -- and I tend to agree with those points, but that is not what I am asking -- in this thread please focus on scientific areas of similarity & difference. Thanks a lot,

River~~

Bruce has given a really excellent answer below. I would only add that if you are interested in how rosetta works in more detail, you might have a look at the papers in Science earlier this year.

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