Every function of a living cell, in organisms from algae to humans, depends on proteins doing their genetically assigned jobs. Proteins in our muscle tissues enable us to move. Others drive the chemical reactions—digestion, respiration, metabolism, waste processing—that keep our bodies working. Still others act as switches for controls such as genes and hormones.
Proteins are great at their jobs—the most efficient machines on earth. But scientists believe there are ways to increase their efficiency and speed at tasks that have taken on a new urgency for humans, such as quickly and inexpensively converting cellulose in grass and wood into ethanol to produce transportation fuels. Also, biologists are looking for ways to reform proteins gone bad, like those whose shapes become corrupted to produce prions, the harbingers of disorders such as Alzheimer’s and mad-cow disease.
Biological research teams are using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility supercomputers to build the knowledge base required to realize the potential of protein engineering. They are revealing how proteins in the cell membrane regulate the flow of materials into and out of the cell. Their discoveries will show us how to harness these molecular machines to expedite the productivity and speed of chemical processes, enable new types of industry, design new pharmaceuticals and medical therapies, and improve human lives in myriad ways.
Current Active Biology Projects
Biology
The Discovery of Longitudinal and Temporal Climatype Patterns
Current PI: Daniel Jacobson, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Allocation Source:
Allocation Hours: 0
Biology
Lipid shuttling molecular machines enabling functions of human cell membranes
Current PI: Harel Weinstein, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Privacy-preserving Transformer Models for Clinical Natural Language Processing – non PHI work
Current PI: Heidi Hanson, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Breaking The Gene Annotation Bottleneck With Structure-based Machine Learning
Current PI: Jeffrey Skolnick, Georgia Institute of Technology
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Extreme Scale Multiphysics Models To Predict Metastatic Tumor Cell Fate
Current PI: Amanda Randles, Duke University
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Rational design of more effective drugs with reduced side effects
Current PI: Ron Dror, Stanford University
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Solvent Disruption of Biomass for the Production of Biofuels and Bioproducts
Current PI: Jeremy Smith, University of Tennessee
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000
Biology
Advanced Computational Modeling of Molecular Machines in Gene Regulation
Current PI: Ivaylo Ivanov, Georgia State University
Allocation Source: DOE INCITE PROGRAM
Allocation Hours: 5,000