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w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m A u g u s t 2 0 2 0 • I NSIGH T | 43 3 Insight on Technology August 2020 of amino acids, molecules t h at con nec t toget he r l i ke bead s on a str i ng using the same chemical bond. A protein consists of one or more of these c h a i n s folded up i n a particular shape, Gutow says. K nowing the sequence doesn't tel l sc ient i st s t he sh ape of t he protei n, and FAH is trying to figure that out. It sends out tasks for computers to tr y with the aim of calculating energy and eventua l ly leading to an estimate of the shape of a protein. P roteins have common shapes, and starting with that knowledge and doing some "jiggling," scientists ca n begi n to ma ke prett y good guesses, Gutow says. "To get good results, you've got to try lots and lots of things. That's why we're seeing some quite promising progress on COVID-19," he says. Many people and organizations with expertise in bringing drugs and vaccines to market are working simultaneously and sharing information, suggesting the scientific community will ma ke progress faster, Gutow says. Whi le he says launching a vaccine before the end of the year is an opt i- m i st ic goa l, t here i s some prom i se for t re at me nt s t h at cou ld prov ide tempora r y i m mu n it y to heat h ca re workers. One technique causes the body to produce antigens typical of the virus, triggering the production of antibodies to the virus. Another technique directly provides instructions to some cells in the body for producing the antibodies. "T hat could make a huge difference i n keepi ng nurses, hospita l workers, orderlies and physicians healthy so they can take care of people," Gutow says. A s he w atc hed t he COV I D -19 pa nde m ic t u r n i nc re a si ng ly grave, Adam Wi l kins, system administrator at RB Royal Industries in Fond du Lac, realized there was a way his company could help. A self-described computer nerd, Wilkins follows several tech communities online, where he learned about Folding@home (FAH). Based at the St. Louis School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, FAH is a distributed computing project aimed at helping scientists develop new therapies to fight diseases. FAH, which launched in 2000, invites individuals and organizations to donate their unused computer power to help research diseases and discover potential cu res a nd treatment s. It's been used to research breast and kidney cancers, i n fe c t i o u s d i s e a s e s s uc h a s E b ol a a nd Z i k a , a nd neu rolog ic a l d i sea ses including Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's. And now it's harnessing that power to study COVID-19. By running simulations, FAH aims to learn how COVID-19 functions and find a therapeutic treatment that prevents it from spreading throughout the body. RB Royal recently purchased a server w it h e x t ra horsepower, a nd Wi l k i n s knew it could be put to good use. When COV I D -19 e me rged , FAH re le a sed a prog ra m t h at 's de sig ned for se r ve rs like the one RB Royal had just acquired. Wi l k i n s v i sited t he FAH website and installed the free software. "I wa nted to give bac k a nd we have the means to do it. It litera l ly costs us nothing," Wilkins says. The Fond du Lac manufacturing comp- any wasn't alone in wanting to help. In late March, when FAH debuted a way for individuals and companies to donate computer power to help run simulations to a id i n COVI D-19 resea rc h, it received a n over whe l m i ng response, with 700,000 operators joining — up from 30,000 before the pandemic. As t he FAH website put s it, "Each simulation you run is like buying a lotter y ticket. T he more tickets we buy, the better our c ha nces of hitting the jackpot." Jonathan Gutow, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, says scientists have been using computational tools for more than 100 years, beginning with hand computations and later taking advantage of computers' powerfu l microprocessors starting in the 1960s and picking up steam in the 1970s and '80s. I n h i s ow n work , Gutow s t ud ie s t he rhinovirus, which is responsible for about 50 to 80 percent of common cold cases. In his lab, he and his team used computational tools to figure out how a cold virus binds to a particular molecule on the cell surface, initiating entr y of the vir us into the cel l. These were considered low-level calculations, and they used a group of 15 computers with massive processors running between three and six weeks and using all their processing power, he says. Computationa l tools a l low scientists to perform more sophisticated ca lcu lations, ones that in the past may have taken years to complete and now can be done in weeks, days or even hours, Gutow says. Their power lies in offering the ability to process in parallel, brea k i ng a l a rge c a lcu l ation i nto a lot of little pieces. "What Folding@home is doing is ta king advantage of the fact that an awfu l lot of people and organizations have computers sitting around that are really not using much of their processing power," Gutow says. After a user installs the program, FAH sets up a background task on the computer and uses the processing power to try various tasks. The project often begins with the sequence Into the fold Program taps unused computer power for disease research On the Web foldingathome.org B Y J E S S I C A T H I E L