congrats to drkicker

[Philippart]

Sep 21, 2006
Predictor of the day: Congratulations to drkicker (Team TeAm AnandTech) for predicting the lowest energy structure for workunit t348__CASP7_ABRELAX_SAVE_ALL_OUT_CONSTRAINT_hishom001__931_0.clean.sc !

congrats ! :beer:

 

[CupCak3]

nice mate

 

[Smoke]

Fantastic!

Way to go, drkicker!

:beer: :beer:

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Well done!

:beer:

 

[petrusbroder]

:thumbsup: :beer: :thumbsup:

 

[networkman]

Congrats!

 

[Assimilator1]

Congrats

But what does it mean? ,lol

 

[Smoke]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Congrats

But what does it mean? ,lol

The structure prediction calculations currently running on your computers will have direct bearing on treating disease. There is a three-fold explanation for this direct relationship between structure prediction and disease treatment:

1. Structure prediction and protein design are closely related.

Improvements in structure prediction lead to improvements in protein design, which in turn can be directly translated into making new enzymes, vaccines, etc. For more information on protein design you might be interested in looking at the review we recently wrote in science which is available at our home page (http://depts.washington.edu/bakerpg).

Schueler-Furman, O., Wang, C., Bradley, P., Misura, K., Baker, D. (2005). Progress in modeling of protein structures and interactions Science 310, 638-642.

2. Structure prediction identifies targets for new drugs.

When we predict structures for proteins in the human genome on a large scale, we learn about the functions of many proteins, which will help in understanding how cells work and how disease occurs. More directly, we will be able to identify many new potential drug targets for which small molecule inhibitors (drugs) can be designed. To put this in context, one major road-block to developing new treatments for human disease is identifying new "drugable" protein targets. Most new drugs these days interact with the same targets as the old drugs, so these drugs lead to only small improvements in disease treatment. Structure prediction helps us identify new drug targets, and so will help us find innovative, perhaps even breakthrough, treatments for disease.

3. Structure prediction allows us to use "rational design" to create new drugs.

If we know the structure of a protein, we can determine its functional sites, and specifically target those sites to be inactivated by a new drug. Calculation of whether a small molecule (drug) will bind to and inactivate a protein target is similar in many ways to the structure prediction calculations we are doing here--it is basically a problem of finding the lowest energy structure of the protein plus drug system--and we have recently developed a new module in ROSETTA to do this docking problem. Results are very promising, and in the near future your machines will likely be running drug docking calculations along with the vaccine and therapeutic protein design projects described above, in addition to the protein folding calculations you are doing now.

 

[strider7]

congrats!

:beer:

 

[BadThad]

I just read that on the rosetta page!

Congrats you lucky dog!

I've been praying to hit one of those myself. Makes me feel like my efforts are more than just stats....the science is #1 baby.

 

[Dalephi]

Congratulations!!

 

[Assimilator1]

Thx Greg

 

[winr]

Congrats.........................................drkicker :thumbsup: