Folding@Home FAQ for new users:
What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.
Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don't, into their predestined shapes - and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer's and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.
How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.
Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.
How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?:
1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired username.
2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic!
3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.
How can my computer help? Even if they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford still wouldn't have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people's desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.
There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.
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List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!
Another Folding Clip
Folding@home Client Download
FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats
Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic
Another Stats Page
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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos
Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12
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Other Useful Stuff - Links
How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed
Point Summary for Workunits
Stat Image Generator
Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software
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Past FreeRepublic Folding threads
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #17 #18 #19 #20#21#22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28
Another completed project, that provided results that we now build upon. How the molecules G5, C6, A7 and A8 fold into itself yet remain active was the object of many years of folding.
The GNRA hairpin is a small secondary structural unit of RNA that contains what some have called an "unusually stable" tetraloop region bridging the two strands that form this helical hairpin. We have previously characterized short-timescale loop dynamics and thermal unfolding of the hairpin and have since undertaking numerous related studies in silico including: unfolding at a biologically relevant temperature, direct folding, evaluation of the equilibrium thermodynamics of this RNA hairpin via replica exchange stochastic dynamics, and calculations of the folding probabilities for a small ensemble of structures (Pfold), which allow us to examine the transition state for the folding event.
This series of projects is now complete, and is the launching point for the new 340-385 series which uses much more sophisticated algorithms to maximize the accuracy obtained and to examine the role of water molecules and ions in the folding and unfolding processes.