Scientists in 27 countries are using a computing grid to help speed the discovery of anti-malarial drugs, United Press International reports.
The Worldwide In Silico Docking On Malaria, or WISDOM, project uses computers to calculate the probability that molecules will dock with a target protein, allowing researchers to focus testing on the most promising compounds.
Scientists analyze an average of 80,000 possible drug compounds against malaria per hour. The network in total has processed more than 140 million compounds, and a grid by United Kingdom physicists accounts for nearly half of the used computing hours.
The latest effort, which began Oct. 1, 2006, and ended on Wednesday, simultaneously used up to 5,000 computers, generating a total of 2,000 gigabytes of data -- the equivalent of 420 years of computing power from a single personal computer, United Press International reports (Gibian, United Press International, 1/31).