Via the NCSA:
The NCSA wrote a very easy to understand, yet quite complete article with explanations about David Baker’s Rosetta project, an theoretical approach to deduct a protein’s structure using computer-simulations.
Things I learned from this article:
- The code does not start with a “flat” protein-molecule, starting to wiggle it around, but with a “homologous known protein structure” as a starting point. I don’t understand if that’s good or bad, but it limits the permutations to be checked.
- David created a portal known as Robetta, where other biologists can submit their models to be crunched.
- The Rosetta-project (not to be confused with Rosetta@home) uses a lot of CPU-hours on NCSA’s clusters and supercomputers (Tungsten Linux Cluster, NCSA Condor Flock, and now possibly TeraGrid resources)
However, quite a nice read, go and grab it while it’s hot!
