Crowdsourcing Computers to Fight TB
The fight against tuberculosis has a new weapon – the crowd. The University of Nottingham in the UK, supported by IBM’s World Community Grid has launched a new study into one of the world’s deadliest diseases – and it will involve crowdsourcing thousands of computers all over the world.
The new Help Stop TB project will model the behavior of the tuberculosis bacterium to understand its potential weaknesses, which could become targets for future therapeutics. The computer processing power needed to perform the calculations necessary for these simulations is enormous, and this is where the crowd comes in.
Volunteers will offer the processing power of their computers, when they are otherwise not being used. By crowdsourcing a virtual computer in this way, the results should come through a lot faster than if scientists were to rely only on their conventional computers.
Understanding Bacteria Behavior
Although there are several drugs and a partially effective vaccine to help combat TB, the problem is the bacterium’s resistance to antibiotics. This is largely due to its outer layer, which consists of fatty acids called Mycolic acids. These make the bug impermeable to antibiotics. Scientists want to find out more about how these acids fold up and behave the way they do.
“TB is one of the world deadliest infectious diseases, along with HIV, and one third of the world’s population harbors the TB bacterium,” said Dr. Anna Croft, lead researcher of the Help Stop TB Project.
“My team will use World Community Grid to help science better understand the TB bacterium, so we can develop more effective treatments, and eventually eradicate this threat to human health.”
If you want to donate your spare computer time to help combat TB, you can join the World Community Grid here.
Dr. Croft, adds: “The more people that do that the faster we’ll solve this”.
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