The SpentBoon of Spatula
    Enjoy!

The Spentboon Rosetta Team Page

There are an increasing number of projects out there that can use your extra computing power to do exciting things. The concept is called distributed computing, and Rosetta at Home is my favorite such project.

Rosetta At Home

Rosetta at Home, hosted by the Universtiy of Washington, tries to predict how protiens form in the body, given the instructions found in our DNA.

Protein formation, often called folding, is the extremely complex process of amino acids taking the shapes that become our bodies. The ability to predict how a chain of amino acids will fold could help us develop better treatments for a host of diseases.

Simply put, you can help save lives by letting your computer crunch numbers while you're running other programs (or when you aren't using it). The more people who run Rosetta, the better it's predictions can be.

By the way, the Rosetta program is secure and stable. The developers have made sure no one can use the program to access your computer.

Steps For Running Rosetta at Home

1. Use this link to join the Spentboon Rosetta Team!

2. Download and install BOINC from the University of California at Berkeley. (This is the platform on which Rosetta runs)

3. Open the BOINC Manager, and select "Attatch to project" under the tools menu. Use http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta as the project URL when it asks for one.

4. Click the button for existing users, and enter your Rosetta at Home username and password when prompted.

5. When you're set up, use the account preferences webpage to determine how and when Rosetta will run.