Many of you have heard of SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI has been trying to find signs of aliens in radio signals that are received here on earth. The task is sorting through the junk (man made signals, naturally occurring signals) to find signals that would have meaning. There is a project run by the University of California at Berkeley called SETI@home that will enable you to use your computer to analyze radio signals as part of a distributed computing effort.

Folding@home is a similar idea, using spare computing power of many, small home computers to tackle extremely large computing tasks. In the case of Folding@home, the task is molecular modeling and the goal is to prevent human disease. The program is being run by the Pande lab at Stanford University.

Follow up:

Proteins in our bodies are molecules that are coded for by our DNA. As every protein's amino acid chain is thrown off the molecular assembly line it spontaneously folds into a complex 3 dimensional protein which is then capable of performing a myriad of essential tasks to maintain life. When there is an error which results in erroneous folding, the final active protein is now defective and causes disease.

The Folding project is currently studying proteins which are thought to be linked to Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, mad cow disease, emphysema, Huntington's disease, and cancer. By understanding how proteins fold and misfold, they hope to further understanding about how these diseases are caused and determine better ways to treat them.

Anyone can get involved and make a difference by allowing Folding@home to run on your computer when you aren't using it. Their software runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even on Playstation 3.

I've done a lot of calculations on power use here at home and I can tell you that letting a closed laptop run overnight every day for a month will add less than $3.00 to your electric bill. I'm already running a laptop 24X7 since it is our home phone (Skype) so letting proteins fold overnight to help science is an easy decision to make. Help scientists to learn more about debilitating human diseases for half the cost of a lunch at McDonald's, count me in!

(Note: If you do choose to get involved, don't think that you will see visual progress by continually checking on Folding's status. Folding 'work units' can take days to complete. The Folding client uses spare / idle CPU cycles and is intended to leave your computer and CPU alone when you need it.)