Help research against coronavirus using your computer
Text by: Pascale Guéricolas
Even when confined, home computer owners can help fight the Covid-19. A team of American researchers appeal to computer game players, consoles and companies that manufacture cryptocurrency. The purpose of the Folding @ home site is to have access to a multiplied computing power to better understand the behavior of the virus.
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Read moreResearchers linked to Folding @ home are trying to understand how the proteins of the virus enter the cells of the respiratory tract. Rather than moving linearly, these proteins move forward by folding and unfolding. This is why the site is called "folding", literally "folding".
Infectious disease specialists have already successfully modeled one of the proteins found on the membrane of the virus. To go further and understand how they cling to cells, teams must have enormous computing power. And this is where computer users around the world come in. By installing software on their personal device, they make the capabilities of their machine available to this gigantic common computer. And this only when they do not need their computer of course. The software does not have access to personal data, it only uses the computing power.
A collective effort against the Covid-19
Nearly 400,000 computer users around the world have downloaded the software to put their computers at the service of this common cause. In the past, the site performed calculations for teams working on diseases such as Alzheimer's, Dengue, Zika .
Since the appearance of the Covid-19, the raw power available to researchers has multiplied by 10 to reach 470 billion calculations per second. This is three times more than the capacity of SUMMIT, one of the largest supercomputers on the planet. The project is led by a professor from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, a central American state, but laboratories from all over are participating.
From the virtual world to the harsh reality
The computers and consoles of those who practice online gaming are particularly suitable, because they have the capacity to perform very fast mathematical operations. These operations will help refine the behavior of the Covid-19 proteins and therefore help find a weapon to fight the virus.
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