Predictor@home was a

volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...

project that used

BOINC The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...

software to predict protein structure from protein sequence in the context of the 6th biannual

CASP Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), sometimes called Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. CASP prov ...

, or Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction. A major goal of the project was the testing and evaluating of new algorithms to predict both known and unknown protein structures. Predictor@home was complementary to

Folding@home Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a volunteer computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements ...

. Whereas the latter aims to study the dynamics of

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduc ...

, Predictor@home aimed to specify what the final

tertiary structure Protein tertiary structure is the three dimensional shape of a protein. The tertiary structure will have a single polypeptide chain "backbone" with one or more protein secondary structures, the protein domains. Amino acid side chains may i ...

will be. Also, the two projects differ significantly in the infrastructure they use. The project used BOINC software, whereas Folding@home maintains its own software completely outside of BOINC. However, for a time, Predictor@home competed with other BOINC protein structure prediction projects, such as

Rosetta@home Rosetta@home is a volunteer computing project researching protein structure prediction on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, run by the Baker laboratory at the University of Washington. Rosetta@home aims ...

. Each uses different methods of rapidly and reliably predicting the final tertiary structure. Predictor@home is currently inactive.

History

Predictor@home holds the distinction of being the first independent BOINC project to be launched. The project was set up and run by

Michela Taufer Michela Taufer (born 23 April 1971)Michela Taufer. (2002''Inverting Middleware: Performance Analysis of Layered Application Codes in High Performance Distributed Computing''PhD). ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich); r ...

at The Scripps Research Institute. On September 6, 2006, Predictor@home was temporarily taken off line, with no new work units being sent out. In May, 2008, the project reverted to Alpha status while experimenting with new methods. Over the summer of 2008, the project servers were moved to the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and as of December 2008, the project had not sent out any work for some months. BOINC stats sites were unable to obtain updated

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

data, as this had been suspended by the project team. On June 10, 2009, the Predictor@home web site and forums were shut down.

References

External links

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
Science in society Free science software Volunteer computing projects Scripps Research University of Michigan {{science-software-stub

History

See also

References

External links