The research team and the World Community Grid tech team continue to collaborate on a new type of work unit for the project.
Background
Trillions of bacteria live inside and on our bodies. The Microbiome Immunity Project is using the computational power of World Community Grid to study the proteins produced by these bacteria, which are encoded in their genomes. This helps scientists understand the role of the microbiome in disease.
So far, the researchers have run more than 300,000 protein sequences through their pipeline, and they have more sequences to run in the future.
Potential new type of work unit
As we mentioned in last month's update, the research team wants to make changes to the work units that they submit to World Community Grid. These changes could potentially speed up their research.
World Community Grid's tech team has tested the first set of these new work units. They're currently working with the researchers on the following:
- standardizing the length of the new work units
- deciding if they will require more physical memory than normal
- making changes to the screensaver graphics
At this point, the tech team believes that the code changes required for the new work units will not require a separate security review. (We'll let everyone know if this changes.)
We'll continue to provide information as this work progresses. In the meantime, there's plenty of research still to be done using the current type of work units.
Papers in progress
The research team is continuing their work on three papers related to the data processed by World Community Grid. One paper was submitted to a journal for review in October and is still under review. The remaining two papers are in the data analysis stage, which is likely to take at least a few more months.
Current status of work units
- Available for download: 713 batches
- In progress: 4,970 batches (7,006,135 work units)
- Completed: 317,650 batches (1,959 batches in the past 30 days,
an average of 65 batches per day) - Estimated backlog: 10 days (researchers are creating more work units, and we are not anticipating any pause in work)
Click here to learn more about World Community Grid's monthly project updates.