Very happy this is in production and I will process as many WUs as possible. Between this, cancer and malaria, my computers are busy.

Welcome to the WCG! Hopefully we can get this project crunched in a decent amount of time for you guys!

When the WCG beta-tests an updated app that allows checkpointing on the workunits that go long periods of time without one. When that is released into production, the amount of workunits available will increase.

Twilyth,
Thanks for bringing that press release to my attention. The advantage of the WCG is sufficiently massive computing power that we can sample an extremely large area of chemical space. We may find molecules that are similar to those in the press release or those that are different. There isn't any structural description in the press release, so I don't know yet what that chemical is or what amount of testing has been done beyond in silico. I have, however, reached out to that company to get samples of their compound to see if it binds our GP and works in our wet-lab assays - the proof of function has to be in those biological assays. They mention they have used structural information on the GP and the receptor to design them. However, to my knowledge, no structural information on the receptor or how it binds GP is yet in existence - this is a topic my lab is working very hard on. Also, a structure of the receptor-binding form of GP is not yet publicly available either. My lab just solved it and we are writing it up for publication. It is being used as part of the WCG search, but that structure is currently unique to my lab.

The filovirus family contains a number of viruses. In that family, the genus ebolavirus contains five viruses: Ebola virus, Sudan virus, Bundibugyo virus, Taï Forest virus, and Reston virus. The genus marburgvirus contains the one Marburg virus. The genus cuevavirus contains Lloviu virus which was discovered in bats in a cave in Spain. The different viral species (Ebola vs Sudan vs Marburg, for example) are quite different in protein sequence. The ebolaviruses are about 50% different in GP. Ebola and Marburg are about 70% different. The receptor-binding site, however, is quite conserved, so this is a key target for us to learn how to develop broad-spectrum anti-filovirus compounds.

Scientifically, a "strain" is the version of each of these species that emerged during different outbreaks. For example, there is the 1995 Kikwit strain of Ebola virus and the 2014 Guinea strain of Ebola virus. Historically, strains have varied very little. 1976 Ebola virus had only a few differences from 2003 Ebola virus. 2014 West African Ebola virus is the most different yet - at leads 55 amino acid changes throughout the genome. However, this is still vastly less variability than we have seen in HIV or influenza during the same time period. So, wherever Ebola and Marburg lurk in the natural world between human outbreaks, they are not subject to very much selection. Sequences from the 2014 Central African outbreak are similar to historical Ebola viruses. The differences that have been observed in GP in West Africa concentrate in the variable, disordered parts of the GP. We are considering both West African and Central African sequences in this project just in case, but I don't yet think that these variations will change the initial targets of the WCG project.

Thanks for your interest!