A Cast of Thousands“My spirit wasready to give up.
Then I realizedthat my little
computer could
join me with somany people who
were really doingsomething.

”

J OS E I ZQ U I E R D O

4HHMI BULLETIN| November 2006

Jose Izquierdo is not a medicalresearcher, but he contributes to studies
that one day could provide cures for
Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, malaria, andHIV/AIDS. Izquierdo, a retiree in Ponce,
Puerto Rico, is one of the more than
75,000 “armchair scientists” involvedin a project called Rosetta@home,
led by HHMI investigator David Baker
at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Rosetta enlists ordinary people who,
whether sitting at their computers ornot, allow their machines’ otherwisedormant processing power to help
predict the three-dimensional shapesof proteins—keystone to understanding
disease and designing targeted drugs.
When Izquierdo became involved,
he was physically ill and suffering fromsevere depression. “My spirit was readyto give up,” he says. “Then I realizedthat my little computer could join mewith so many people who were really
doing something.” Now he devotes asmuch passion to conducting his pieceof the research as he gives to cultivating
award-winning orchids—Izquierdo
once transported a single cut flower
in a Samsonite from his Puerto Rico
home to a competition in Philadelphia.
Rosetta relies on “distributedcomputing,” a process that takes amassive calculation and breaks it into
chunks to be sent across the Internetand processed by home computersworldwide. While the Izquierdo “lab”
crunches numbers, the computer ofThomas Dooley, for instance, way up inAlaska, does likewise. Kathryn Marks’s
computer ran Rosetta virtually full time
while she was teaching English in
South Korea. Also not a white-coat
type, she would “check in” every evening
while in her “jammies, listening tocountry music.”
Participants are organized into
far-ﬂung teams, and Izquierdo is thestatistician of his team, meaning hekeeps track of “credits” earned by eachvolunteer. The team, called XtremeSystems, is one of Rosetta’s highest
performers. Its 500-plus members
worldwide include “grandmothers, kids,
rich people, poor people, Ph.D.s, andhigh school dropouts,” says Izquierdo.
Volunteers pride themselves on
their team’s clever monikers, such as
Dutch Power Cows, The Knights Who
Say Ni!, and The Final Front Ear. Someeven name their computers, with“Clark Kent” reputed to be the mostpowerful machine.
Rosetta participants admit to being
both obsessive and competitive. “Credits
essentially have no value except forbragging rights, which do happen to
motivate a lot of people,” says volunteer
Mark Pottorff. Some participants “crunch”
nonstop, and several have invested in
auxiliary machines just to contribute tothe cause.
Darin Stefﬂ, a Minnesota high school
student who runs his own computerPeter Arklecentrifuge

Dreams About Science andHoops in America

Jason Growbusiness, uses seven PCs for Rosetta.
“Most people’s computers are justsitting there doing nothing,” he says.
“Why not have it do something useful?”Taking that notion even further, one
Team XtremeSystems member in Hong
Kong devotes hundreds of computersfrom his business to running Rosetta
full time. “We call it ‘The Farm,’”
Izquierdo says.
Many volunteers were drawn toBaker’s program by the loss of a loved
one. Marc Abrams, a businessman fromNew York, explains, “My mother diedof cancer when I was 18, and my wife
died of melanoma ﬁve years ago. Thisis a way for me to help solve themysteries of those diseases.”
No matter what motivates Rosetta
volunteers, almost all of them cite theircamaraderie with other participants
as a main attraction. Many chat with
one another on a daily basis, using
the Rosetta message boards. “But weare not nerds,” Izquierdo maintains.
“We trade barbs and jokes. We candiscuss anything from how to improvethe computer to how to make aneasy-bake cake.”
They also cite Baker’s accessibility
as a factor that drives their zeal.
“Dr. Baker and his team take the time
to explain what they’re doing. Even
if you don’t always understand thescience, you’re made to feel like partof a family,” says Izquierdo. “WhenDavid Baker calls for help, it will come,because people have such loyalty
toward him. He’s kind of like a cultﬁgure.” —Lindsay MoranF O R M O R E I N F O R M A T I O N : To learn more about

Rosetta@home, visit http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/.

Growing up in East Germany when it was still a stalwart of the Communist bloc,Dorothee Kern was an outstanding student with a passion for science. But what
she really had going for her was a talent for sports.
The government was strenuously trying to identify potential athletic superstars
who could put this small nation on the map. “The officials went to all the schools,”
says Kern, now a biochemist at Brandeis University and a newly minted HHMI
investigator. “In second and third grade they measured your fingers and toes, asked
how tall your parents were. They were trying to see how the genes fell and look forathletic talents.”
Young swimmers, track and field athletes, gymnasts, and others with Olympic
potential were intensively trained in special schools—almost to the exclusion ofacademic studies. And as became well known after German reunification, many
were given steroids, growth hormones, and other performance-enhancing drugs,
with often-tragic medical consequences. “You were not a free person,” says Kern.
When she was in fifth grade, Kern was chosen for a special sports school inswimming. But her father, wary of a perilous future for his daughter, said no. Instead,she chose basketball, also one of her early loves. “Basketball wasn’t an Olympic
sport for East German athletes, so I could go to a top academic school instead
and wasn’t pressured to take drugs.”
By the age of 12, Kern was playing on the junior national team—her entry
ticket for high school. Despite receiving top scores in middle school, Kern was
not nominated for high school because her family was not “in line” with thecommunistic society. However, playing on the national team was her way to “support”
the country, opening the door to high school followed by college at the MartinLuther University in Halle.
Sports continued to be a major part of her school life during her biochemistrystudies at the university, where Kern juggled academic work with travels for thebasketball team. She persisted in her studies and sport alike, ultimately earning aPh.D. and captaining the German national basketball team for 8 years.
Nevertheless, the repressive government and hidebound structure of the East Germanscience establishment rankled her, as they did so many of her colleagues. It was good-bye
to all that when the Wall came down in 1989. “That was big,” she says. “You could takeyour life in your own hands, go to another country, have freedom of speech.”
When the opportunity came up, she quit pro basketball and accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she loved thescientific environment and the scrappy style of American pickup basketball. In 1998,
she moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, to take a tenured position
at Brandeis. Her husband is a scientist at a major pharmaceutical company, and herdaughters, who attend Waltham public schools, are outdoorsy and athletic and want
to become scientists. On a recent summer day, they bounced into Kern’s office readyto play basketball with mom on her lunch hour.
“One of the best things in life is to have big dreams,” she says reflectively.
“Mine was to become a professor in science, to have a family, to play basketball,and live in America. And it has all come true.” —Richard Saltus

November 2006 | H H M I B U L L E T I N5