From: Barbara Lamar (altamiratexas@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Dec 13 2000 - 23:55:14 MST
This may already have been posted to the list, but in case not I'm sending
it since there was some recent discussion of computer-power. URL is for a
protein folding project being run by some people in the chem. dept at
Stanford. Similar to the SETI project.
Barbara
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/Cosm/
WHY IS PROTEIN FOLDING SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?
It's amazing that not only do proteins self-assemble -- fold -- but they do
so amazingly quickly: some as fast as a millionth of a second. While this
time is very fast on a person's timescale, it's remarkably long for
computers to simulate. In fact there is a 1000 fold gap between the
simulation timescales (nanoseconds) and the times at which the fastest
proteins fold (microseconds).
A SOLUTION: DISTRIBUTED DYNAMICS
To solve the protein folding problem, we need to break the microsecond
barrier. Our group has developed a new way to simulate protein folding
which can break the microsecond barrier by dividing the work between
multiple processors in a new way -- with a near linear speed up in the
number of processors. Thus, with 1000 processors, we can break the
microsecond barrier and unlock the mystery of how proteins fold.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:32:23 MST