As many long time readers know, our resident black-hat blogger, G-man, survived several bouts of cancer over the last few years. Last week, I received an email from him asking if we could mention one of the most fantastic resources available for helping in the fight against the disease – World Community Grid. Their projects include:
- Helping to Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Investigating protein-protein interactions for 40,000 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases.
- Fiocruz Genome Comparison – Comparing genomic information to improve the quality and interpretation of biological data and our understanding of biological systems, host-pathogen and environmental interactions.
- Human Proteome Folding – obtain higher resolution structures for specific human proteins and pathogen proteins and further explore the limits of protein structure prediction.
- Fighting AIDS – using computation methods to identify candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease.
They also recently (in April of 2007) completed cancer research into Tissue Microarrays to determine how to improve the treatment of cancer with earlier and more targeted diagnostic tools.
Of course, after G-man pinged me, I downloaded the program and installed. The software is fascinating because it actually shows your progress and contributions:
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The stats show that widespread adoption has yet to be achieved. I can’t see why there aren’t millions of members by now:
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Hopefully, you can help out not only by downloading the software, but also by spreading the message. If you’ve ever been part of a family or friend circle that includes someone facing these diseases, you can empathize with the need for this research.
UPDATE: SEOmoz now has a team set-up on World Community Grid! Go download the program and join team SEOmoz FTW! and help use your powers for good (or awesome).
