Various forms of cancer in addition to diseases such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia are formed when a defect occurs in the folding process. Understanding the complex nature of this behavior may give researchers the vital information they need to determine how to combat these diseases.
Some proteins also have natural tendencies to prevent or fight disease.
Understanding the structure of proteins like P53 can be crucial to discovering new cancer treatments, and to finding ways to prevent cancer altogether. Thirumalai's team has validated the ability to improve the speed of their research by using Frontier for calculations that previously required a cluster of high-powered Alpha workstations. As a result of the successes achieved to date, Thirumalai plans to extend his use of Frontier to analyze full protein structures - research that has yet to be conducted by any organization due to the lack of affordable computing power in the marketplace. Frontier works by dividing large computer jobs into small tasks and sending them over the Internet to thousands of computers. While the user is away from his or her desk, the computer processes the task and sends the results back to Parabon.