you probably picture a bunch of server racks,

covered in blinking lights in a lab somewhere.

But did you know that you easily make

your home PC part of a super computer, for free

and for a good cause.

The subject of today's video

is a project called Folding@home

and no, we're not talking about laundry.

Folding@home started at Stanford University

but is now run from multiple sites around the world

and the goal is to research protein folding.

But how does it do this home computers

and what the heck is protein folding anyway?

Well, stay with me here

because protein isn't just the stuff

that weightlifters drink by the bucket full.

Your body uses all sorts of different proteins

for everything from building muscle fibers

to intercellular signaling and the crucial thing

to remember about proteins is that their function

depends heavily on their shape,

which is where the term 'folding' comes in.

After a protein is assembled it has to fold

into its proper shape to be useful,

kinda like how you can't throw

a piece of paper across the room

until it's in the correct shape.

I choose ball.

But unlike a paper airplane,

which you can just follow simple instructions for,

protein folding is much more complicated.

You see, proteins are made up of 20 different

kinds of small units, called amino acids

and while they're structurally similar,

all 20 of them have different side chains that,

as the name implies, stick of to the side of the molecule.

When you connect a bunch of amino acids together,

linearly to form a protein, these side chains interact

with each other in ways that cause a protein to fold,

depending on how their shaped

and their electrical properties as well.

As you can imagine, the more amino acids,

the more complicated these interactions become

and the typical protein might be hundreds

of amino acid residues long.

And of course, it's critical for a protein to end up

in the correct shape or conformation

because otherwise it couldn't function.

For example, cells have proteins on their surfaces

that serve as signaling receptors

and they only function because they are shaped

in a certain way that allows them to bind

with this signaling molecules

or other proteins from outside the cell,

kind of like two puzzle pieces coming together.

The TLDR is that understanding how proteins fold

has very important implications in medicine.

For example, understanding how viral proteins interact

with cell membranes to invade cells

is critical to finding treatments to some viral diseases.

So the team behind the project

is currently using Folding@home to research

the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

The better we can understand what parts of the virus

especially the ones that bind to human cells,

could be attacked with the drugs,

the more likely it is that we can develop medicines

that can treat or cure the disease.

But anyways, this is tech quickie not biology quickie

so let's tie this all back to the Folding@home project.

It turns out that simulating protein folding patterns

is very difficult to computationally.

In nature, proteins fold in a tiny fraction of a second

but it can take years of computer time to sort out

exactly how a protein will fold,

given a certain amino acid sequence

and a big part of the problem

is that we don't yet fully understand

the mechanisms behind protein folding.

So the idea behind Folding@home,

is to leverage spare home computing power

in order to solve these difficult problems.

All you need to do to participate like I am,

is install a client onto you home PC

from the Folding@home website.

The program will then give your system

part of a folding simulation to run

and then send back to the program servers.

You can specify how much of your PC spare computer muscle

to use, depending on how much you want it to affect

your power bill and you can also choose whether

to run the simulations only when the system is idle

or also when you're actively using them

or maybe you choose depending on how hot

your house is already.

If you have a high-end graphics card,

you're gonna help even more.

The highly parallel nature of GPU architecture,

which you can learn more about up here,

can really speed up simulations

but you also don't need super fancy hardware.

The current version of the client support CPUs

all the way back to Pentium four.

Now, it might seem like the impact one system makes

on the project is minuscule,

but all that spare computing power really adds up

and taking collectively the Folding@home network

is up there with the world's top super computers.

This has enabled real scientific breakthroughs

that would've been much harder to reach otherwise.

Hundreds of scientific papers have been published

from the project's findings and have also been useful

for those involved in drug discovery.

So, if you can spare a bit of power,

download the Folding@home app today.

Join the LTD Folding team and make a difference,

your PC might even wind up finding

a cure for the coronavirus,

which could not only safe lives

but also finally put an end to all

these people hoarding toilet paper.

What's up with that anyway?

Geez, it doesn't make you poo more, you poo the same amount.

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