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Folding@home hits home |
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Last summer, my dad underwent brain surgery to deal with a Parkinson’s like disease called essential tremors (ET). Characterized by the tell-tale shaking of hands, ET differs from Parkinson’s in that the trembling mostly occurs when the subject is performing a concentrated action such as eating, cutting with scissors or writing. It is also hereditary. There are very few non-surgical treatment options for the disease aside from heart-rate lowering drugs such as Inderal, used for hypertension and the anti-seizure medication, Mysoline.
After eight years of dealing with ET, Dad finally opted for surgery. Arun-Angelo Patil, a leading neurosurgeon in Omaha, Neb. implanted a device known as a thalamic stimulator in the left side of Dad’s brain that was linked by wires to a playing card-sized control device in his chest. Dad was awake during the procedure so he could respond to Dr. Patil’s questions to be sure the surgery was targeting the right parts of the brain.
Today, Dad, 74, is virtually tremor free in his right hand and is completely off the medications that were hampering his active lifestyle. He is able to write, eat and perform other fine and gross motor skills without the disabling shaking of his hands. He is still deciding as to whether he’ll have surgery on the other side.
Thanks to Castlecops, I was recently made aware of and signed up for a program sponsored by Standford University called Folding@home, which is a simple way for the general public to get involved in medical research. Utilizing a concept called “distributed computing,” participants can download a program that runs in the background of your computer. This non-intrusive program “folds” virtual proteins in an effort to help study how real proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.
According to a story by CNN, “Improperly formed proteins are linked to a number of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad-cow disease.”
The human body is made up of proteins, which start out as long strings of amino acids. These strings assemble themselves into complex shapes, referred to as folding, before they can be useful. Because proteins are so small and change so rapidly, they are difficult to observe. So instead of trying to see them, scientists are using computer simulations instead. The project is daunting though as it takes about a day for a computer to simulate a nanosecond (one-billionth of a second) so it would take about 30 years for that computer to complete one protein simulation.
Currently, there are about 200,000 home computers in the Fold@home network dividing the workload into smaller, more manageable work packets. It was also recently announced that the soon-to-be-released Playstation 3 will come equipped with Fold@home capabilities. So on those rare occasions your child isn’t glued to a game, say when he’s at school, this pricey piece of gaming equipment can be used to advance medical science by folding proteins.
Nearly everyone is touched at one time or another by life-threatening disease such as cancer, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s either in themselves, a family member, friend or co-worker. If by allowing my computer to run an unobtrusive program in the background I could potentially help cure any one of these diseases, I’m all for it. Maybe it will even save my siblings, my children or me from going through what my dad has already endured.
For more information on Stanford University’s Fold@home program, visit their homepage at folding.stanford.edu or the Fold@home forum here at Castlecops. Be sure to use your Castlecops user name and the Castelcops Team number, 35586, when you sign up and join our united online efforts. Together we can fold for a cure.
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