Computers in 11 UK universities and research laboratories have been employed in the fight against avian flu.
As part of an international collaboration, computers at UK universities and research labs have put in one hundred thousand hours of time searching for possible drug components against the avian flu virus H5N1.
The analysis used a scientific computer network known as the computing Grid. The computing Grid used in the UK was originally built to help particle physicists examine the huge amounts of data from their experiments. But it is now part of a wider project called EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE), that lets other scientists share its resources.
"The Grid is useful for any kind of research that needs lots of computing power. In this case it's greatly speeded up a step in the search for drugs against avian flu,” said Professor Tony Doyle, Project Leader for the UK particle physics Grid.
The computers on the international Grid were used to analyse 300,000 possible drug components against the virus. In total 2,000 computers were used during April. More than 60 000 output files with a data volume of 600 Gigabytes were created.
The goal was to find potential compounds that can inhibit the activities of an enzyme on the surface of the influenza virus, the so-called neuraminidase, subtype N1.
The computers used in the UK came from the Universities of Brunel, Birmingham, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Lancaster, Manchester, Oxford, Royal Holloway University of London, University College London, and CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. They are all part of the GridPP project, which runs the UK particle physics Grid.
www.gridpp.ac.uk