What are proteins?

Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Proteins help your body break down food into energy, regulate your moods, and fight disease.

What is protein folding?

Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." While protein folding is critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology much of the process remains a mystery.

For more information see the Science page.

Why is it important to understand how proteins fold?

When proteins do not fold correctly, also known as misfolding, there can be serious health consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers.

If we better understand protein misfolding we can design drugs andtherapies to combat these illnesses.

For more information see the Folding@home FAQ on diseases.

How can I help?

The best way to help is by downloading and running the free Folding@home client software. Each computer that participates increases our ability to understand how proteins fold.

Once installed the Folding@home software runs behind the scenes using otherwise unused computing time. Mostly likely you will hardly even notice it.

If you would like to make a donation see the Donations page.

Where do I start?

The first thing to do is install the software. See the Installation Guide if you need help with this.

Monitor your folding status

Once you've installed the software run FAHControl and look for the "Online: Running" status. If you're having problems visit the Folding Forum.

Run the 3D viewer

You can view the protein running on your computer in 3D by running FAHViewer.

There are many resources for Folding@home help.

• The Folding@home Frequently Asked Questions page answers many common questions.
• On the Client Development Project page you can find information specific to the new v7 client, report bugs and learn about the 3rd-party development API.
• The Folding Forum has a very active community of expert folders who would be glad to help you with any problems you might have. It is also a great place to get more involved.

Competing is fun and helps the cause.

Do you have the latest hardware? Are you itching to show off what your new GPU or overclocked CPU can do?

Complete folding Work Units and earn points.

Monitor your Points Per Day (PPD) to keep track of your performance. Visit sites like Extreme Overclocking, Kakao Stats or Hard Folding to see how you and your team compare to folders around the world.

Start or join a team.

Starting a folding team is a great way to promote Folding@home. Use your technical skills to build a folding power house. Compete with teams across the globe or for top positions with in your team.

To check out current Folding@home statistics or to start a new team see the Folding@home Stats page.