Stanford University is seeking help from the general public in seeking volunteers to help researchers in developing treatments and therapies for the novel coronavirus. Folding @Home is a distributed computing project launched by Stanford. Folding @Home uses the processing capacity of networked computers that initiates the complex process of protein folding.
This process allows the discovery of medication and other processes for grave diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Cancer. Studying the process of unfolding of protein would help the researchers to develop or work towards a cure. The first step of the disease happens in the lungs, when the virus binds itself to the receptor on the cells present on the lungs. This viral protein is known as the spike protein.
This sort of high intensity research requires really high computational power and this power is drawn from the volunteers computer when the computer is idle. This project had famously used the Sony Playstation3 due to its unique core processors that provided with better outcomes with better efficiency.
There have been more than 89,000 confirmed cases of the Novel Coronavirus, more than 3000 people have died due to this disease. This step could rationally aid the infected.
