Nvidia, a company that makes products designed to enhance the experience of computer gaming (like graphics cards, monitors, and specialized laptops), is encouraging PC gamers to join a movement to lend their unusued, spare PC processing power to help scientists analyze “structural biology and biochemical data” that could help medical professionals better understand, treat, and even prevent the spread of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.
The company recently relaunched a project called “Folding@home,” which allows users to “lend their distributed power” — power from their computers graphics processing units and other key device elements — “to all kinds of research.” This time around, the program is being used to help scientists “simulat[e] potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and the related SARS-CoV virus (for which more structural data is available).”
“These projects could help researchers better understand coronavirus, and eventually even develop effective therapies against it. If you’ve been grappling with feelings of helplessness in the face of the worldwide outbreak, this is a small but real way you can lend your aid to the world without any medical experience,” gaming journalism outlet GamesRadar notes. “It also doesn’t hurt that you don’t need to leave your house to do it, since we’re supposed to avoid that as much as possible anyway.”
In other words, PC gamers can practice social distancing and contribute to the betterment of humanity at the same time, giving those cooped up under coronavirus quarantines the opportunity to help curb the spread of novel coronavirus.
The Folding@home project has, in the past, been used to track the spread of Zika, Ebola, and Dengue fever, and ongoing versions of the project track everything from breast cancer to Parkinson’s disease, in the hopes that the power of GPU processors can allow data scientists to identify openings for medical treatment.
The program is “dedicated to understanding protein folding, the diseases that result from protein misfolding and aggregation, and novel computational ways to develop new drugs in general,” Nvidia says. By tracking protein folding and “misfolding,” researchers can “recognize invading elements” and learn how to help the human immune system better handle progressive and dangerous diseases.
To help, PC users need to download a program and run that program in the background while completing other tasks. Because gaming PCs typically have bigger and better processors, they’re ideal for the project.
For COVID-19, “we hope to take advantage of some of the new structural biology and biochemical data that is being rapidly released by researchers around the world who are working to understand these viruses and strategies for defeating them.”
“This initial wave of projects focuses on better understanding how these coronaviruses interact with the human ACE2 receptor required for viral entry into human host cells, and how researchers might be able to interfere with them through the design of new therapeutic antibodies or small molecules that might disrupt their interaction,” the project’s dedicated coronavirus page reads.
As new data becomes available, the project scope will expand.
Right now, the programs leaders say response to the project has been overwhelming and their servers are struggling to keep up with the demand for downloads.