Research is vital in our day-to-day life. And considering the situation in which we live in now, it has become even more crucial. but unfortunately, the necessary funds are not always available to carry it out. Luckily, there are associations and initiatives that deal with that together we can help, and the latest NVIDIA is to use our graphics cards to help research the COVID-19 by Folding @ Home.
This is a project started by Stanford University in which the power of collaborating computers is used to help in the study of proteins related to various diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkin. are among others.
Now they are dedicating themselves to helping researchers around the world in the fight against the coronavirus, and companies like NVIDIA are encouraging us to join the cause with our graphics cards.
Hardware at the Service of Researchers
Contributing to this cause is as simple as downloading software to get our hardware up and running for it. Something that as we saw encouraged the graphics manufacturers together with the PC Master Race association.
They reported their team for anyone who wants to participate from it, listing the projects focused on COVID-19 that cover various types of proteins and receptors for the action of drugs against the virus.
If we install it and start it, we will see that in the category selector a COVID-19 or similar tab does not appear yet. At this level Pedro , founder of PCMR, explains that you must select “Any disease” (or if we wish, another cause).
It is not necessary to have a dedicated powerful graphics, we can contribute even with the graphics card with a shared memory of a laptop. The more power the more you contribute. But as Pedro also says each bit can help.
IT reminds in its statement about what they are doing to help the investigation against COVID-19. Something that is of enormous importance especially in countries like Spain, Iran, Europe, where the figures are not encouraging at all and we all need to do our part to curb the contagion.
They explain that this first round of projects is focused on better understanding the interaction of the virus with the ACE2 receptor of human cells. And on how new therapeutic antibodies or molecules can be designed to prevent this from happening. If there is no interaction, there is no infection.
Proteins are macromolecules whose shape conditions their activity and action. Therefore, knowing and/or developing them can be key for immunological treatments and therapies. They can become very complex, and developing computational models of COVID-19 receivers requires computational power.
They explain that they have managed to crystallize the protease that describes the virus’s RNA. But the one that binds to our cell receptor ACE2 remains to be solved, and they hope to achieve this from the SARS-CoV homolog. So if you want to join now that perhaps your PC is doing more hours, you already know how to do it.