A Folding@home for disease prediction A Distributed Computing Revolution for Disease Prediction. How volunteer-based simulations are helping us understand diseases better

Abstract

We have made a lot of progress in understanding how diseases work.. Traditional laboratory methods have limitations. They cannot show us what happens at the level especially when it comes to protein folding. Proteins need to fold into shapes to work properly. If they do not fold correctly it can lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s cancer and cystic fibrosis. Folding@home is a platform that uses computers to simulate how proteins behave. It uses thousands of volunteer computers to process data, which helps researchers understand how diseases work and find potential treatments.