How much MORE memory/credits is needed to complete 100% of this project?

When all of the diseases listed in the "About" page have been cured, then you could say BakerLab will probably wrap things up. ...so... it's gonna be a while!

This is a research project, not a production project. The crunching helps examine which approaches to predicting protein structure are working the best. And how to make them better. So, until they are perfect, there will be room to improve upon them.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

O, thank you!

It's three years since the question was asked. I fully understand that asking for a "percentage complete" figure is totally naive, but equally, I'd like some progress feedback to help me judge whether it's worth spending a few cents each night leaving my computers running. The website seems to focus on side issues such as teams, top ten lists, a certificate and videos of coloured folded protein structures, which leaves me concerned that real progress is either minimal, or unmeasurable.

The promise of useful outcomes clearly keeps the people behind this project hopeful. Is there a way that this hope can be packaged up in a way that ordinary people can share in it?

Dr. Baker just posted an update. Beginning work on less expensive testing kits, in addition to developing the technology to go after things like H1N1, HIV and Alzheimer's sounds like a good cause to me.

The website is largely the standard BOINC server page. This makes it feel familiar to participants in other BOINC projects, but there are several links there to detailed scientific information about the project, and to papers that have been written by BakerLab.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Thank you for the answer.

... developing the technology to go after things like H1N1, HIV and Alzheimer's sounds like a good cause to me.

Oh, that part was never in doubt (that's why I chose this project over any other) and it's well explained.

What was less well explained was whether a useful outcome could be expected in 5 years or 50,000 years. A link to Dr Baker's thread was what I needed, and I've bookmarked it now.

If you can imagine, the researchers really can't even tell how close they are. They have made measurable and incremental progress very consistently over time. You get a feel for the rate of change by the fact that CASP only runs every two years. Part of their reluctance to express a timeframe is that even once their work is done, someone has to incorporate a delivery mechanism and undergo regulatory approvals before the public has a treatment, drug, vaccine, etc. that it sees. Since these portions of the required effort are undertaken by others, there's no concrete answer.

For my self, personally, being a volunteer not a member of BakerLab, I am in my mid-forties. And I view R@h as an insurance policy. I believe that by the time I become a high risk for cancers, and Alzheimer's, that treatments will be available to address them. Perhaps not even as a direct result of the work in BakerLab. Perhaps it is the result of another lab that felt the pressure to keep up with BakerLab, and struck upon the magic technique that produces nearly perfect structure predictions.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense