Protein structure: taking it to the bank

Properly functioning proteins are essential for our bodies. A protein’s structure, the folded form its amino acid string assumes, determines its function. Scientists know the sequence and structure of about 50,000 proteins—out of millions. They keep this valuable information in a “bank”—the NSF- and NIH-funded Protein Data Bank. To predict the structure of a newly identified protein, scientists can compare it to a similar banked protein.

This works quite well, but what if there is no similar protein in the bank?

Feature - EGEE-Industry collaboration

Enter the age of computer merchants

Modern researchers are not short of ambition. LHC scientists will sort through 15 million petabytes per year, and WISDOM scientists already test tens of millions of chemicals in computer models.

This is an opportunity for companies like Digital Ribbon in the U.S., which seeks to be a kind of clearing house for computational resources.

Feature - High volume processing

How do you run a million jobs?

Researchers want an easy way to specify and manage many jobs, arrange inputs, and aggregate outputs. They want to get on with the business of research.

At SC08, several experts organized an informal session to share information on up-and-coming solutions for expressing, managing, and executing “megajobs.” They also discussed ways of repackaging work to avoid megajobs altogether.

Link of the week Welcome to a new GridCafé The GridCafé website has received a facelift. This new-look GridCafé includes all-new content as well as links to new grid computing blogs and podcasts. We’ve also introduced drop-down menus to help you navigate more easily. Read more				Award of the week Health-e-Child wins best exhibit at ICT 2008 Health-e-Child, a European distributed computing project that fits grid technology to pediatric medicine has won the ICT 2008 Exhibit Grand Prize worth €10,000. Read more