Live webcast for Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy: February 6th, 16:00 UTC
3 Feb 2014
Summary
Join Prof. Alessandra Carbone, leader of the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy research team, for a live webcast that will explain how World Community Grid members are helping unravel the mysteries of protein-protein interactions in neuromuscular diseases.
On February 6th at 11:00AM Eastern Time (USA) / 16:00 UTC, Dr. Alessandra Carbone, from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, will lead a live web presentation to give updates about the methods, approaches, and results from Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy project.
Neuromuscular disease is a generic term for a group of disorders (more than 200 in all) that impair muscle functioning either directly through muscle pathology (muscular dystrophy) or indirectly through nerve pathology. Protein-protein interactions govern many processes in the body, and improper interactions can cause disorders, such as muscular dystrophy. To find better treatments, researchers first need to understand the potential interactions between thousands of different proteins potentially associated with the disease.
These interactions can be modeled and analyzed using computational techniques but this is still challenging. Proteins are complex, dynamic 3D objects and modeling interactions between hundreds or thousands of these requires millennia of computing time – which World Community Grid volunteers have generously provided. The two phases of the project have used increasingly sophisticated models to help identify proteins that are likely to interact within the cell. Phase 1 found success by modeling likely binding energies between proteins and combining this data with experimental knowledge. Phase 2 explored whether it is possible to reliably predict binding behavior based on modeling and evolutionary information.
Join Professor Carbone for this live webcast and get up-to-the-minute information about her work and the kind of research that World Community Grid volunteers make possible every day. There will even be a question and answer session where you can ask her your own questions about the impact of her project on muscular dystrophy.
Link
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