World Community Grid and Chagas

[Guest guest]

I was poking around today in the forums over at World Community Grid

(WCG) and found out that one of the protein folding projects there has

been working on protein sequences for Trypanosoma cruzi which is the

parasite that causes Chagas. Those of you who have been here for a while

will remember that Chagas is a cause of achalasia in Central and South

America and that Chagas is currently incurable. Those of you who have

donated idle computer time to WCG may have helped in this research that

some day may lead to a treatment or cure for Chagas and Chagas related

achalasia for millions of people in Central and South America.

Some of you may remember that I have also posted about the " Help Cure

Muscular Dystrophy " project at WCG. MD is also a neuromuscular disorder

and there is the possibility that things learned there will effect other

neuromuscular disorders such as achalasia. In any case contributing to

these kind of projects helps to develop the methods which can be applied

to finding treatments and cures for other disorders. Who knows, someday

the answers for achalasia may come form these kinds of methods.

The researcher's page that lists the Chagas research is at:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~rb133/wcg/thread_2009_03_24.html

(see the table at the bottom of the page).

For more about WCG see:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp

BTW: one of the things I like about WCG is that, as I understand it, the

data from the projects will be public.

notan