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Interesting Research
Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:32 am
by b1llyb0y
I just came across this in the morning and thought I might share with all, I'm sorry If its in the wrong category (if so, please move it to the correct one).
Evolution Reveals Missing Link Between DNA and Protein Shape
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... gle+Reader
Re: Interesting Research
Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:52 am
by Jesse_V
Thank you very much for the interesting article. However, it appears to be focused on protein structure prediction, which is predicting the final shape of the protein from its initial amino acid sequence. This is a challenging biomedical problem, but too often is classified as "protein folding" most likely because the protein needs to fold somehow to get into that shape. Perhaps I'm missing something, but they seem to be focusing more on the final structure rather than the actual protein folding process. Both have significant medical implications. The protein folding problem, as in figuring out how proteins get to their final shape is significantly harder than protein structure prediction. Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R@H#Project_significance and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F@H#Biomed ... gnificance and you can get an idea of the differences between the two problems. I'll look a bit more at this article because I too am interested in these kinds of things, so thank you!
EDIT: for the record, while F@h focuses on protein folding, to a lesser degree it also runs some protein structure prediction projects. Rosetta@home is a DC project entirely focused on protein structure prediction. I find it incredible that we have enough computing power to computationally tackle both challenges simultaneously!