Nutritious Rice for the World

[UBT-mark3346]

This has been running about a month and has very low system requirements

At least 128 MB RAM (with virtual memory enabled)
200 MB Hard Disk Drive with at least 50 MB available for use
The ability to display 8-bit graphics at 640x480 resolution
An Internet connection with minimum 28kpbs speed
Operating System: Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, or Vista (same for Linux)

How is Protinfo different from other approaches?
Protein structure prediction is an active area of research, and no one method or methodology is "best" for all situations. The public success of projects like Folding@Home, POEM@Home, Human Proteome Folding, and Rosetta@Home are evidence of the interest in solving this computationally challenging problem. We wish to offer another approach that differs in certain subtle but significant ways that can provide complementary and competitive results.

Some approaches (like Folding@Home and POEM@Home) simulate the protein folding process as we believe it occurs in real life, where physical energies are minimized. Protinfo (like Human Proteome Folding and Rosetta@Home) uses a minimization of "statistical energies" to identify likely protein structures, but with a slightly different approach. Rather than relying on a single complex energy function, Protinfo uses a simple, easily evaluated function and chooses the best structures by following up with a set of more sophisticated functions. Another difference is that Protinfo uses a novel continuous sampling methodology that enables us to explore good structures more finely. The continuous sampling methodology incurs little memory overhead and evaluating our compact energy function is very fast. This allows Protinfo to run on almost any computer.

Why rice?
Rice, maize and wheat are the three main cereal grains in the world, accounting for 43% of the world's food calories. The rice genome is the only cereal genome that has been sequenced. While the rice genome is different from the human and other mammalian genomes, it is a good model for the other cereal grains. Lessons learned about how the functions and interactions of rice genes interact are likely to be useful in understanding the genetics and biology of other major crops.