I'm leaving Seti@Home for what it is. No more searching for little green men. Instead, I''m devoting my CPU time now to more down-to-earth science : Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.

Since proteins play such fundamental roles in biology, scientists have sequenced the human genome. The genome is in a sense a "blueprint" for these proteins -- the genome contains the DNA code which specifies the sequence of the amino acids beads along the protein "necklace." However, only knowing this sequence tells us little about what the protein does and how it does it. In order to carryout their function (eg as enzymes or antibodies), they must take on a particular shape, also known as a "fold." Thus, proteins are truly amazing machines: before they do their work, they assemble themselves! This self-assembly is called "folding." Understanding protein folding may lead to a cure for protein related diseases.