The computer war on Ebola continues
The Global Computer War against Ebola starts from your laptop
Maxim Malakhovsky, distributed.org.ua based on Fast Company materials:
The Global Supercomputing War On Ebola Starts With Your LaptopThe Ebola virus epidemic continues to claim lives in West Africa: at the moment, almost 8 thousand people are known to have died.
Along with the efforts of international medical organizations that seek to limit the spread of the virus and help those infected, work continues to find effective vaccines and medicines for this deadly disease. Users of personal computer equipment also provide assistance in this matter by participating in the Outsmart Ebola Together project within the framework of the World Community Grid association.
Employees of the Sapphire Laboratory of the Scrips Institute share statistics on the participation of volunteers in the Outsmart Ebola Together project. To date, a total of 680 thousand people from 80 countries have helped with computing resources, providing 76 thousand years of processor time, if translated into the work of a typical laptop. The average computing speed of this distributed network would be enough to take the fifth position in the top of the most productive supercomputers in the world.
"The World Community Grid was conceived by IBM as a charitable service in the scientific community, says Ari Fishkind from IBM's public relations department. "With WCG's investment value of several tens of millions of dollars, this resource helped scientists avoid spending $340 million when renting supercomputers." At the same time, all researchers using the World Community Grid as a research platform make the results of their work open for use by the scientific community. IBM does not receive any rights to the research results.
"We are busy searching for therapeutic antiviral molecules capable of suppressing the Ebola virus in order to eventually achieve the appearance of highly effective drugs such as ZMapp (experimental Ebola treatment)," they say in Sapphire. "On the computers of our volunteer assistants, the efficiency of binding various chemical compounds to proteins on the surface of the virus is calculated."
Volumetric model of ZMapp antibodies attached to the Ebola virus (Scripps Research Institute)
Sapphire believes that the three-dimensional structure of the Ebola virus has made it possible to identify a specific area on the surface of the virus that is vulnerable to chemical attack. This is the battlefield of structural biology – to investigate the structures of biological objects such as viruses in order to identify their weaknesses.
Getting antiviral drugs is like solving a puzzle. The functions of proteins depend on the spatial structure into which they fold. Medicinal chemical molecules have specific forms that allow them to bind effectively to viral proteins and "turn off" their work, leading the virus to destruction. The first important goal on this path has already been achieved by "Sapphire" – the surface protein of the Ebola virus responsible for infecting human cells has been isolated. If it is neutralized, then the virus can no longer harm.
And then the World Community Grid appears on the scene, which provides the necessary computing resources of volunteers from all over the world to help researchers from Sapphire "shovel" huge amounts of data and identify candidate compounds that could cope with the necessary virus protein. "We have libraries of chemical substances that are candidates for medicines, they are divided in "Sapphire". – Now we have the opportunity to process them using the World Community Grid. We are going through thousands of variants of molecules, assessing their impact on the right part of the Ebola virus."
Dr. Olson's laboratory has developed a software for data collection – AutoDock, which was first used in the FightAIDS@Home project. With the help of AutoDock, the target virus is mathematically analyzed in interaction with candidate drugs to find the most suitable ones. This saves a lot of time and money before starting testing in a real laboratory.
The participants of the Outsmart Ebola Together World project from Community Grid have already provided many years of shared machine time over the past few weeks, but there is still a long way to go before the Sapphire laboratory can get the necessary data. It will take another couple of months to compile a priority list of medicinal molecules and start their laboratory and clinical trials.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru14.01.2015