Dr. Snow, a new investigator at Colorado State University, gave a presentation focused on upcoming research. A unifying theme of this research is the engineering of new, synthetic proteins with applications in bioenergy & medicine. Specifically, Snow and colleagues are using computational protein design to engineer new cellulase enzymes for more efficient and economical biofuel production. To facilitate these calculations, the Snow group is developing software (SHARPEN) that could be deployed on the Folding@Home network. The technical barriers to developing a SHARPEN F@h core were discussed. Notably, F@h can still contribute to these design problems using existing molecular dynamics simulations.
