Folding@home: April Update

It’s Easter, so it must be time for another update from TSA’s Folding@home team. At least that’s what it says on my calendar.  I even tried asking in Thorntons if they had any dark chocolate models of protein molecules hidden away amongst the bunnies and eggs, but I just got a strange look before being invited to leave the store.  So here is my effort:

Okay, so it’s not a protein, I don’t have anything like enough mini eggs to make a protein molecule.  This little molecule is called glycolaldehyde (HOCH₂-CH=O). It is a very simple sugar (there’s the Easter/chocolate link) that can combine with other molecules to form more complex sugars such as ribose and glucose.  It can also form precursors to both nucleic acids and amino acids.

Ribonucleic acid is important to protein synthesis, making the proteins, while amino acids are the building blocks that proteins are made from.  As you can see glycolaldehyde is quite a versatile molecule.  It is also quite cool in both the thermodynamic and aesthetic senses as it has been found in space, in gas and dust clouds near the centre of The Milky Way and in star-forming regions.  This suggests that the molecular building blocks for the creation of life on a new planet might get a head start in the dust of interstellar clouds.  Interesting molecule, no?

That’s enough random protein-related facts for this month, time to get to the point of this post which is to let you all know how our Folding@home team are doing.  So without further ado…

March was Team TSA’s most foldable month so far.  For the first time we scored over 500,000 in a single month, accelerating our progress up the Folding@home leaderboards.  In the last update the question was would be be able to overtake the N4G team before this update.  This time around the question has become where are they now?

Both the N4G and GameTrailers teams have ceased to exist for us as like a blinkered racehorse we can only see those teams we have yet to chase down.  Hopefully this time next month we will have passed the team from Sony Online Entertainment which will mean they can quit folding and get on with finishing The Agency for us.

Team Info

PS3 Related Team Overtake

Time now to hand out some recognition to some of the individuals contributing to TSA’s folding efforts.  First up a special mention to RedStarGlow who has become the first team member to pass the 1,000 work unit mark.  Despite that achievement SuburbanMe has taken top folding honours for the month, nearly becoming the first to score 100,000 between updates.

We also welcome eight new members to our team this month.  One of whom, codeman-, has managed to leap straight into 25th place on the chart of the team’s most active, active folders.  Fellow new recruits AdmiringWorm and trisko also managed to make it into March’s top folder list.

New Members

Top March Folders

Top 25 Active Folders

If you would like to help contribute to the biomedical research projects whose science is the whole reason for the Folding@home project’s existence then please consider joining our team.  Alternatively if you are just looking for another way to participate in TSA’s community and maybe get your name up on a front page post you are also more than welcome.  Just head on over to the Folding@home thread in our forum for all the information and help you might need.

Here for your enjoyment are the graphs of the team’s monthly progress and that of the top ten individual folders.

Anyway, enough from me, I’ve got a mini egg-based glycolaldehyde molecule to go and eat…