Banu spoke with us today. She went into a little more detail about her specific research. She explained how the research is used to find possible drug treatments for diseases such as cancer. The drugs target certain characteristics that cells exhibit. The medications used for cancer, target cells that grow rapidly, any cells in the body that grow rapidly and doesn't distinguish between "good" or "bad" cells. Hair grows rapidly, so these cells are targetted by the cancer meds which is the reason cancer patients lose their hair during chemo treatments.
We began to play the game called "Fold It" today. It simulates protein folding. Online players change the folds on the protein using all of the "rules of folding". The players info is used to identify possible new proteins. The main demographic of these online players are 45 year old housewives. Supposedly they don't feel guilty spending hours on this game, because they are helping with scientific research.
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