Research Update

Since World Community Grid's launch in November 2004, more than 500,000 devices have been registered. The computer power that our volunteer community has donated equals one PC running nonstop for more than 76,000 years, an average of 1,000 years a week! World Community Grid's sheer power would rank it among the top five super computers in the world, allowing researchers to shave years, if not decades, off the time it would have taken to run their research on available computers.

As a result, World Community is now able to run five projects simultaneously, making World Community Grid the only public grid to achieve this milestone. Thank you for the computing resources that you provide to make this possible.

World Community Grid feels strongly about providing information about the progress of each project to our volunteers. In the past, the researchers for each project had reported progress updates in the forums, but these were difficult to find. Now, the researchers are providing volunteers with periodic status updates on their own web sites. You can access this information by going to worldcommunitygrid.org's Research section. The first paragraph for each project description provides information about where to find project status information.

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy: Neuromuscular diseases impair proper muscle function by either directly impairing muscles or the nerves which control them. Most of these disorders have been found to have genetic origins, with more than 200 genes identified. Much is still unknown about how these genes and their proteins function in the disease processes. The Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy is using the computing power of World Community Grid to search for binding sites between the proteins, genes, their genetic variations, and ligands (potential drugs) involved in these diseases, with a particular focus on muscular dystrophy. This will reveal more specifically how the components interact which should ultimately lead to a better understanding of the role the proteins play in these complex diseases and hopefully lead to improved treatments. This project, which is sponsored by the Decrypthon Program in Paris, France, was launched in December of 2006 and is expected to run through March of 2007.

In Depth Research Description
Status Report

Genome Comparison: The Genome Comparison Project is performing pair-wise comparisons among and between all genes for all sequenced organisms (from human beings to fruit flies to yeast) and building a database of the results. Because most of the proteins (which are the machinery that ultimately make everything in cells work) coded by these genes have not had their functions identified, this database will be very helpful in determining the functions of these proteins. If the gene coding for a protein of unknown function is similar to another gene which has been extensively studied in another organism, then most probably the function of the unstudied protein is somehow related to the function of the known one. Because the database will be available to the research community, other scientists will have a huge headstart in understanding what these proteins do, how they play a role in disease processes, and ultimately in understanding how to devise a drug to combat a disease involved with the particular protein in question. This project, which is sponsored by Fiocruz in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was launched in November of 2006 and is expected to run until June of 2007.

In Depth Research Description
Status Report

Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2: The first phase of Human Proteome Folding has been completed, having mapped all of the proteins in the Human Genome, as well as several other organisms to determine their shape and function. The second phase of this project is focusing on a small number of proteins that are key markers for disease diagnosis and impact, with a special focus on proteins linked to malaria and cancer. The Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 project, which is sponsored by the Bonneau Laboratory at New York University in New York, New York, was launched in October 2006 and is expected to run through December of 2008.

In Depth Research Description
Status Report

Help Defeat Cancer: Help Defeat Cancer is using the power of World Community Grid to analyze tissue microarrays (TMA) – a breakthrough investigative tool that will give researchers improved understanding of cancer biology and could uncover new sub-classifications of cancer that will point to more accurate prognosis for cancer patients and new, more effective courses of treatment. Volunteers should note that this project has very large computer memory and disk requirements and therefore can only run on very high-end computers. The Help Defeat Cancer project, which is sponsored by Professor the David J. Foran's Laboratory at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was launched in July 2006 and is expected to run through June of 2007.

In Depth Research Description
Status Report

FightAIDS@Home: FightAIDS@Home is using computational methods to identify new candidate drugs to block HIV protease, a key molecular structure that when blocked, stops the virus from maturing and thus is a way of avoiding the onset of AIDS and prolonging life. Thanks to the volunteer power of World Community Grid, researchers at The Scripps Research Institue in La Jolla, California were able to complete 5 years of research in just 6 months. This project, which is sponsored by The Olson Laboratory at Scripps, was launched in November 2005 and is expected to run through 2008.

In Depth Research Description
Status Report

In addition to these five research projects, we are busy working on the 2007 queue of new projects. Please stay tuned for the launch of exciting new projects!