Alpha-Synuclein and Parkinson's Disease - Folding@Home Success

The Journal of Neuroscience ^ | M.G. Spillantini et al.

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Small, dense deposits, termed Lewy bodies or Lewy neurites, stud the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease. The three sections of brain tissue shown above depict how the protein, alpha-synuclein (stained brown), packs these deposits. This finding, and others, leads many scientists to believe that alpha-synuclein plays a key role in Parkinson's disease. Researchers are now searching for ways to stop their negative actions and hopefully aid patients in the future.

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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 (see link below). 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 he were given exclusive access to all of the world’s supercomputers, Standford 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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About 250 FRepers are actively folding their fingers to the bone trying to help cure various diseases. Parkinsons Disease has afflicted nearly one million people in the US alone, including Muhammed Ali and Michael J Fox.

This is a small part of the research that is going on using the information gathered from the Folding @ Home distributed computing network.

Please join our team (that's 36120) and help us make a difference for the future!

[TruthFactor]

You're right. If everyone with a computer would do this we would accelerate emencely the delivery of the cures for disease we'll be seeing soon because of it. I belong to the World Community Grid, a related organization to Folding@Home.

Jump on board people and let's live longer, healthier, better lives.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/viewJoinNow.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

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The World Community Grid is also a very good organization. Is there a FReeper team?

WCG seems to be much more of a corporate project, and less grass roots than F@H.

I stayed with Folding@Home after the Genone@Home project. We started this team almost two years ago, but it didn't take off until other FReepers startd publicizing it.

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Thanks for joining the team!

[Straight Vermonter]

My folding has ground to a halt. I can't seem to finish this WU since it gets up to 60-70% and then goes back to 0%. I suspect it is an issue with my ancient PC.

I'm looking to buy a new PC and I wonder if anyone could familiarize me with the differences between the Windows XP home, professional and media center versions.

[ovrtaxt]

Cool. I just completed my 13th work unit last night. I love this!!

[ovrtaxt]

I got the Media Center version with my last PC. Just nore bells and whistles with multimedia files. It automatically organizes songs, etc.

That's all I know. I've had home and professional in the past, and I've never lacked for features. What do you use your comp for?

[Drango]

TEAM 36120 bump

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overtxt is right - what do you use your computer for?

XP Home is good enough for most folks. XP Media Center is available and standard for all but the cheapest systems.

If you mostly surf the net, get a fast CPU, a good video card and lots of RAM (512 mb - 1gb). A SATA drive is recomended if you can get it with your package.

I suspect that you have issues with the old system, probably with Windows. If restarting the system doesn't help clean up the problem, then delete the entire F@H directory and install a fresh copy.

Ping us with updates, please!

[fanfan]

Bump

[manwiththehands]

Sales pitch for any shared distributed computing network task: My PC isn't complaining about the extra workload, and I don't even notice.

[Drango]

List of Updated 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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New thread bump.

[HangThemHigh]

Are we going to draw any unwanted attention with this in News/Activism vs. the usual General/Chat? I thought that was part of our "agreement". We don't want to offend the powers to be.

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We'll be fine. This is a part of the paper Dr Pande presented in December regarding the F@H results on a misfolded protein. That makes it a legitamate science article, so I grabbed Extended News for the science aspect.

If all we did was to crow about being #169 (which we will be after the noon update) then that goes into chat.

We have several new folders and I wanted them to see what their folding helps accomplish.

[tsomer]

I'm glad you posted here.

I just signed on.

Thanks

[RebelTex]

Over the hump, bump

(hmmm - that doesn't sound quite right)

rephrasing - Thurs AM bump

;^D