Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

fold.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 85 posts

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#12

Post by rckoepke »

russfink wrote: post #11
hkt wrote: post #9

HN hug of death?

Down at 6:52 ET

Intermittent. Reloading sometimes makes it work. Probably best not to reload multiple times, that multiplies the hug of death effect. Just bookmark it and come back later.

I feel silly, I've known about fold.it and fold@home for years now, but somehow interpreted this title as a design for a binder, like a printable cosmetic insert for a school binder.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#13

Post by amelius »

pas wrote: post #7
amelius wrote: post #6

If you find a protein that blocks the virus, how difficult would it be to find a drug delivery mechanism that is capable of reaching all the important cells?

Isn't blood pretty good at this?

I'm not a biologist but I suppose that not every kind of protein enters any kind of cell.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#14

Post by usrusr »

_Wintermute wrote: post #4
Aissen wrote: post #2

I know it's fun, and I think participative science is such a huge shift in paradigm … But considering the global impact of coronavirus, I'm wondering if there shouldn't be a better way to fund this type of endeavor. Any cloud provider willing to donate compute to researchers?

The research institutes I've worked at have all had copious amounts of compute resources usually freely available to reserarchers. I'm not in this field, but I really don't think compute power is the limiting factor in stopping this outbreak.

Yeah, if you could somehow just trade compute for cure... Got a minor chuckle out of the hypothetical that the virus could somehow be defeated with hashrate: poor thing wouldn't know what hit it.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#15

Post by cowsandmilk »

Aissen wrote: post #2

I know it's fun, and I think participative science is such a huge shift in paradigm … But considering the global impact of coronavirus, I'm wondering if there shouldn't be a better way to fund this type of endeavor. Any cloud provider willing to donate compute to researchers?

fold.it is a lot more about the fact that humans still are a lot better at exploring complex spaces than computers. Analysis of results has shown players reaching semi-global minima in folding space much quicker than computers and designing novel folds that express and crystallize that have not been seen in nature before (which means they can explore more space than starting from known templates). Researchers are trying to learn from the types of moves that humans make in the game to improve algorithms, but humans are still better at searching, making very productive large moves in folding space.

So basically, this is less about funding and more about the fact that our algorithms aren’t good enough.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#18

Post by moomin »

Aissen wrote: post #2

I know it's fun, and I think participative science is such a huge shift in paradigm … But considering the global impact of coronavirus, I'm wondering if there shouldn't be a better way to fund this type of endeavor. Any cloud provider willing to donate compute to researchers?

So close, and yet so far...

What you're looking for is a well-funded public health system. And to vote out politicians that defund healthcare.

Post reply on HN