It's time for all of us to work together and help scientists gain an understanding of genomes to help find medicines and cures for what are now incurable diseases!!! -- Join the VB World team!

genome@home is a project based at California's Stanford University, and is based in part on the work of the Human Genome Project. The project's goal is to design new genes that form proteins for use in medicine and to help understand protein evolution, among other things. Using the distributed computing model most known for it's use in seti@home, genome@home uses large numbers of computers to significantly increase the amount of work that can be done in a given period of time. This is done by having each person participating install a small program on their computer that runs when their computer is idle. It is always running in the background, but does not use any CPU or memory unless there is some to spare, so it won't interfere with your normal computer usage.

The project works on the basis of teams of individuals working together. Users are ranked based on how many they have produced individually and how many the team they are associated with has produced. Jelsoft has formed a vBulletin team. You can help find new genes and engage in friendly competition at the same time. Following are step-by-step instructions to download the software, install it, and put in the vBulletin team number.

At this time there are two versions of the software available - one for Windows and one for Linux/x86. The Mac version is coming soon.

First you must download the software. Go to http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/download.html and enter your email address, and choose a username and password. Write these down somewhere in case you ever need to download the software again. Once you click the button it will take you to a page with a link to download the software. Select the one for your system (either the Windows or Linux version) and download it. The Win version is about 950KB.

Since I don't have a Linux system to test it on, the following are directions for installing it in Windows, and then I will continue the general instructions for both systems.

In Windows, once downloaded, double-click on the file. You will be taken through an installation wizard - just hit next until you get to the "Finish" button and then click that. Then to start the client, go to Start > Programs > Genome@home > and click on Genome@home.

For both systems, the first time you run the client you will be asked to input your information. For each question, the word(s) in brackets is the default, and can be used by hitting enter.
For username, use the same username that you entered at the genome@home site when downloading. The team account number is 1884565109. Just hit Enter for the server and port number and also for the firewall (unless you have one).

Once you have done this, it will get work for the first time. You should not close the window until it completes getting work - it will say "Data received". At this point it will start running through its' paces - you can just leave it alone. You can minimize the window, but don't close it - closing it will stop its' work. The program processes each unit 30 times, or 30 iterations. The program tells you which iteration it is on - it will say "Designing protein sequence x of 30". It reports progress every 10% of an iteration, so you will see 10.0%, 20.0%, etc. If you can wait for it, it is recommended that you only close the client right after it has finished an iteration - when the screen says "Designing protein sequence x of 30", because the program saves after each iteration. When the program completes the 30 iterations, it attempts to upload its' work and get more. If it can't (e.g. you aren't connected to the internet or the genome@home server is down) it will try again 3 more times, waiting 2 minutes between each try. After the 4th try it goes back and "reseeds" and goes through the current work again, which somehow produces a different result. Don't ask me, I have no idea how. It can go through the current work as many times as necessary, until it can connect to the server and get more work.

If you have left the program running for a while without an internet connection and would like to upload any completed work, simply close the window and then restart the program. It will automatically attempt to upload any completed work and get more, which it will start processing after it finishes its' current work (if any).

Each completion of a gene, or 30 iterations, is worth a number of work units. The number depends on how large the amino acid is - the program tells you how which AA it is working on, and the first thing it does is create a "filtered rotamer library", and will say right under that "xx positions to filter" which is the length. For a typical 56AA (which is by far the most common), it is worth about 18 work units. Teams and individuals are ranked by work units. Rankings can be seen by going to this page (which lists all teams and their stats), or a more detailed view can be seen here (online soon). You can also look up your personal stats by going here and putting in your username.

You can find more information about installing the program here. You can find the genome@home FAQ here. There is also a Yahoo! Group that might be helpful. That is located here.

So come on guys and gals, get those 'puters crunching!! I bet you can't get more points than me Let the race begin...

John

Thanks Kevin (tubedogg) from vBulletin for putting this together!