IBM uses World Community Grid to fight tuberculosis

IBM launched the World Community Grid (WCG) back in 2004. WCG is a global community that allows any user of a PC, smartphone or tablet to provide the unused computing power of their device for the benefit of the project. Currently, WCG participants are 750 thousand people and 470 organizations from 80 countries. The total number of projects in WCG is 26.

The voluntary computing project runs on the BOINC platform, the principle of WCG is similar to how the distributed computing network @SETI functions . Only in the case of WCG, the participants are engaged not in the search for extraterrestrial life, but in earthly problems - research in the medical field (the fight against cancer, AIDS, influenza).

Now IBM has decided to use the resources of WSG to combat the “silent killer” - tuberculosis. To do this, a separate project “Help Stop TB” has been launched, led by the University of Nottingham from the UK. The aim of the project is to study tuberculosis bacteria in order to determine the best method of combating the disease. As is known, the causative agent of tuberculosis is the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb).

The main part of the system is placed in the IBM SoftLayer cloud . According to IBM representatives, if all users of electronic devices provided the service with the unused capacities of their devices, then the overall performance of such a system would be much higher than the performance of the fastest supercomputer at the moment.

“With the help of World Community Grid volunteers, we plan to simulate various types of mycolic acid in the bacterial cell walls in order to understand how these structures affect the functioning of the bacterium. A basic study will allow scientists to develop a treatment method aimed at eliminating the pathogen defense system, ”says Dr. Anna Croft, a leading research scientist. Mycolic acids are the generic name for the group of long chain branched fatty acids. They have the general formula R1-CHOH-CHR2-COOH, cross-linked, and contain 60-90 carbon atoms per molecule (C60-C90). They are an exceptional component of the cell wall of mycobacteria, including pathogenic Mycobacterium tuberculosis.



Mycobacterium tuberculosis (an increase of 35,000 times)

“This will help us develop a more complete and complete model of the cell wall and better understand the role of mycolic acids in the defense system of the causative agent of tuberculosis,” continues Croft. According to her, tuberculosis is one of the most dangerous killers in the world. Due to the fault of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in 2014 alone, more than 9.6 million cases of tuberculosis and more than 1.5 million patient deaths were diagnosed. WHO has declared tuberculosis one of the most deadly infections. This bacterium is very resistant to the effects of drugs and means of protecting the human immune system due to the structure of its cell walls, which makes it difficult to treat the disease. If you solve the problem of bacterial vulnerability, this will help solve the problem of tuberculosis.

Mycobacterium is very stable in the environment. So, at a temperature of 23 ° C in a humid and dark place, it persists for up to 7 years. In a dark and dry place (when the patient’s sputum dries or in dust), the MBT is stored for up to 10-12 months, in street dust (that is, in a dry and bright place), Koch’s wand lasts up to 2 months, on the pages of books - up to 3 months, in water - up to 5 months. In soil, the MBT lasts up to 6 months, in raw milk - up to 2 weeks, in butter and cheese - up to a year.

To date, it is believed that mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum remains viable with open boiling of the latter within 5 minutes. Mycobacteria are sensitive to products containing chlorine (bleach, chloramine, etc.), tertiary amines, as well as hydrogen peroxide.

Any user can become a member of the WCG system. To do this, register at this address . After registration, the participant selects a project for which he wants to provide his computer resources. Having joined the network, the user receives a separate computing task on his computer (the project is divided by IBM specialists into millions of subtasks). Having completed the task, the PC transfers the results of the calculations to the server and receives a new task. Calculations are performed only when the computer is not involved (thus, participation in the project does not interfere with the implementation of the main tasks). The calculation results sent to the server are automatically connected to the results of other tasks, and form the overall result.



Perhaps the free processor time of a large number of electronic devices will help, nevertheless, to overcome this dangerous disease that humanity has been fighting for many hundreds of years. So far, the process has been varyingly successful, since Mycobacterium tuberculosis is indeed extremely resistant to external influences. If it is possible to find a gap in the protection of the cell walls of the causative agent of tuberculosis, the malignant bacterium will be defeated forever.