Innovation is a profound kind of recycling. Innovators go through the closets, sheds and attics of human knowledge, taking snippets of what we already know and combining them in new ways, solving new problems.<\/p>\n
Despite mass quarantine and isolation, innovations appear almost daily that aim to save lives and support people\u2019s well-being in the face of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Here are six ways technology is taking on the novel virus.<\/p>\n
The power of home computers is helping scientists develop an antibody to stop COVID-19 infecting lung cells. You can take part by downloading a protein folding simulator<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n Why simulate how proteins fold? According to Ariana Brenner Clerkin of Folding@home<\/a><\/u>, COVID-19 first infects people when a protein on the virus surface (the spike protein<\/em>) binds to a lung cell\u2019s receptor protein (ACE2).<\/p>\n Scientists are looking for an antibody protein that can prevent infection by stopping the spike protein binding to its receptor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n They\u2019ve already developed an antibody for similar coronavirus SARS. To find one for Covid-19, they must better understand the spike protein\u2019s structure. They need to study all shapes the spike protein can make. Folding@home models the Covid-19 spike protein and finds sites for an antibody to target. Computational models can do the folding, but they need a lot of computing power.<\/p>\n Many computers working toward the same goal will speed up finding an antibody. The data that comes out of Folding@home is open to all.<\/p>\n The free online game FoldIt<\/a><\/u> goes a step further and crowdsources designing a protein that may become a future COVID-19 antiviral. Run by scientists alongside the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design<\/a><\/u>, the game lets users design a protein that will bind with COVID-19\u2019s spike proteins.<\/p>\n The Institute for Protein Design will manufacture and test the most promising community-generated protein designs against the coronavirus spike protein.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n2.\u00a0 Crowdsourcing protein design against the coronavirus<\/h2>\n