Have you ever wished you were a scientist? Have you ever imagined yourself making a contribution to the scientific, technological and medical innovations that are taking place as the world settles into the 21st century amid all of its potential? Well, you may think it’s too late to go back for your doctorate, but there is something you can do to help change the world in a big way—at any age—and maybe help yourself and your health along the way.

It’s called The Microbiome Immunity Project, and it aims to understand how trillions of bacteria in and on our bodies impact diseases like Type 1 Diabetes, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – illnesses that are being diagnosed with increasing frequency.

But there is a catch. A kind of citizen science project, The Microbiome Immunity Project needs the help of the general public to succeed. The primary goal of the project is to generate a set of predicted protein structures of the entire human microbiome--containing some 3 million unique genes--to help scientists determine the role played by these bacteria. The results of the project will then be shared with scientists around the world to further facilitate research on diseases implicated with the microbiome.

This is the largest computing effort directed at the human microbiome," Knight said. "The amount of computation is massive because protein 3D structures are difficult to compute.

Read the source article at Forbes Welcome