The Final Result

[Keenin]

I know every project is different so an example of one project would be fine. What happens after the all the computing is done. What does the data look like. Is it just a bunch of numbers or a neat little animation? How much information is there to go through?

[[BrainBug]]

I've actually wondered about that myself.

[bruce]

Folding@home calculates the position of each atom in a protein as a function of time. When the trajectory is finished, it is, in fact, a series of numbers. What happens with those numbers is important, though. Those numbers can be shown graphically making the complex pictures such as the ones in the movies referenced here: viewtopic.php?p=73089#p73089
in addition to the motions, there's more to be learned, though, including the sequence of the motions, the times associated with each step in the process, the total energy as it changes from unfolded to folded, etc. If you're a scientist and you know what to look for, though, this leads to other types of understandings such as why the protein folded in an unexpected way or what the actual final shape is or how various parts of the simulation interacted with each other.

I'm just a layman, though, so one of the Pande Group might add a lot more information about the things that I don't understand.

[VijayPande]

The movie is a good example, but the final answer often looks like a map of states and probabilities between them. Check out our paper (#58 Simulating oligomerization at experimental concentrations and long timescales: A Markov state model approach). It has such a diagram for Alzheimer's Disease. We use such information to understand the relevant states of the protein, and thus the relevant structure, etc.