The most promising medical accomplishments seem to be coming from Genetic and stem cell research.I've been crunching numbers with hope and beleif that some how I'm truely helping science.Could someone out there simply explain to me how protein folding will result in either cures or effective treatments for diseases? I'm trying to compare the two. Thanks ed.from connecticut

---

Hi Ed,

Check out our Disease Related Research. Currently, the use of protein structure predction and design for health related applications is a complement to, not a competitor of, the other fields you mentioned. If you have more questions after reading the above page, feel free to post again.
Vanita.

---

Since the DNA strands of genetics and the protein strands studied by Rosetta are closely related chemically, when you learn about one, you learn about the other in some ways.

It looks like the text of that disease related research page has been revised and improved. ...or perhaps it's just been a long time since I read it and now it seems to make more sense.

If you think of it as predicting the shape of a protein, rather then "folding", then you can more easily picture that the shape will determine what can chemically bind to a protein. If you predict the shape incorrectly, then things don't align as you had planned between your disease and your cure. Since many diseases are caused be cells which have unique proteins around them, it is possible to use these as a means of identifying disease cells, binding chemically to them and knocking them out or otherwise preventing them from working their damage. All while drifting past healthy cells.

Most of the work at Rosetta@home is on improving the prediction techniques. Mankind still does not know how to accurately predict the shape that a given amino acid sequence will take. But we've come a long way in the past few years. We now have predictions that are often accurate enough to be used in developing vaccines and treatments for disease.

The Baker team works to make the tool (the Rosetta program) for protein study better. They also collaborate extensively with other teams around the world to help them utilize the Rosetta tool and to study the areas where it requires further improvement.

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/