Calling all graphic designers and web folk! Chances are, you have a pretty good computer with a graphics card. What if I told you that you can help researchers work to find a cure or some kind of therapy for the novel coronavirus? Well, you can. If you have a computer with a decent graphics card, you can use your graphical power to fight the COVID-19 outbreak (and several other illnesses, like Cancer, Parkinson’s, etc). Just let it run when you’re not using your computer. You can always shut it off to reclaim your full graphical processing power whenever you want.

Click here to download the Folding@home application and start putting your spare graphics processing power to good use. The program links your device into an international network that distributes the processing power among users all over the world to crunch through enormous computing tasks – something that a high quality graphics card can do extremely efficiently.

Coronavirus specific projects:

  • 14530/14531 Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target
  • 14328 – Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target
  • 11741: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2.
  • 11746: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2 (alternative structure to 11741).
  • 11742: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease in complex with an inhibitor.
  • 11743: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target.
  • 11744: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.
  • 11745: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain mutated to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

All of these projects are under the default “any” setting. Currently, there is no coronavirus specific selection so all related projects will be grouped up and sent under the ANY setting.

PC Master Race (PCMR) is quickly becoming one of the largest contributors to the research (bypassing Google today) because of users like you. To learn more about their project, or if you need help figuring out how to run it, check out this main Reddit thread. Team PCMR is number 225605 if you want to join. Even if you don’t want to join any team, or have another team in mind to join, the important thing is that you join folding@home!

The folding@home system has been around for many years and it was even available on Play Station 3 back in the day allowing users to share their distributed power to complete all kinds of research. A new wave of projects “simulating potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and the related SARS-CoV virus (for which more structural data is available)” were released on the platform earlier in the week.

These efforts can help scientific researchers better understand coronavirus, and eventually develop a cure or effective therapies to fight it. This is a small, easy, and very real way you can contribute to the world during this outbreak without any medical experience. It also helps that you can stay home to do it, since we’re all being advised to do that as much as possible anyway.