End of Nutritious Rice for the World project


World Community Grid is pleased to announce, that as a result of the generous contribution of computing power from our members, the Nutritious Rice for the World project finished on April 6, 2010.



Nutritious Rice for the World Research Project Completion

Member News

World Community Grid is pleased to announce that as a result of the generous contribution of computing power from our members, the Nutritious Rice for the World project finished on April 6, 2010.

The project was launched on May 12, 2008. While it was active, World Community Grid members processed over 29 million results which required nearly 26,000 years of computing power. This work would have taken about 200 years of time using the computing resources available to the researchers at the University of Washington. Using World Community Grid, this research was completed in less than two years.

With this project's completion, our members have significantly contributed to the research that is being done to ultimately develop rice strains that will make a difference in fighting malnutrition and feeding the world’s people.

Now comes the difficult part of sifting through the data to find the best models. The researchers need to find the best models from the almost 7 billion models generated. This should take approximately 3-6 months using their fastest methods. After identifying the most accurate models, they will use the information to figure out what functions these proteins perform in the rice organism. This involves comparing the structure and sequence to known proteins which is also a time consuming process. The plant genomes are not nearly as well studied as the human and mammalian genomes which makes the process all the more difficult.

You may read about these plans and get the latest update from The Nutritious Rice for the world scientists in this forum thread or on their website.

The Nutritious Rice for the World research staff at the University of Washington, USA wish to express their sincere gratitude to you for contributing your computer power to this project.

We still need your help with six (6) other ongoing projects! World Community Grid continues to run the following projects: FightAIDS@Home, Help Conquer Cancer, Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2, Help Fight Childhood Cancer, Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2, and Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together, Phase 2. All of these important projects need your computer time. If you only had Nutritious Rice for the World selected for active projects, then you will start receiving work from the other active projects. To modify your project selection criteria, please go to the My Projects Page.