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Aug. 8, 2005--Thanks to a new agreement between Michigan Tech and the Neumann Institute for Computing, in Juelich, Germany, MTU physics professor Ulrich H. E. Hansmann hopes to advance his understanding of some of the world's deadliest diseases with the help of one of the most powerful computers in the world. Hansmann uses computer models to predict the shape of proteins. Protein molecules fold into shapes so complex as to make the most elaborate origami seem simplistic. Properly folded proteins form the underpinning of all processes in the human body. Malformed proteins are implicated in diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to mad cow disease. "To predict how a protein will function--or malfunction--you need to calculate its structure, and you need lots of computational power to do that," Hansmann said. "The supercomputer at the Neumann Institute allows me to simulate proteins in a way that's really useful." Misfolded proteins can form toxic aggregates in the brain, causing damage that, so far, has proved irreversible. "They stick together and can destroy regions of the brain," Hansmann said. Mad cow disease is among the scariest of these diseases, but individuals are much more likely to succumb to other maladies involving proteins gone bad, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Under the agreement, Hansmann will head the Computational Biology and Biophysics research group at the Neumann Institute for Computing. The group consists of four postdoctoral researchers, two PhD students, other visiting scientists and Hansmann. These researchers will have privileged access to the institute’s 10-teraflop supercomputer. "It's orders of magnitude better than what's available to me now," Hansmann said. |