Performance Estimation of a BOINC-Based Desktop Grid for Large-Scale Molecular Docking

2021 ◽  
pp. 348-356
Author(s):  
Natalia Nikitina ◽  
Maxim Manzyuk ◽  
Črtomir Podlipnik ◽  
Marko Jukić
Author(s):  
Md. Asad Ullah ◽  
Bishajit Sarkar ◽  
Syed Sajidul Islam

AbstractEbola virus is a highly pathogenic RNA virus that causes haemorrhagic fever in human. With very high mortality rate, Ebola virus is considered as one of the dangerous viruses in the world. Although, the Ebola outbreaks claimed many lives in the past, no satisfactory treatment or vaccine have been discovered yet to fight against Ebola. For this reason, in this study, various tools of bioinformatics and immunoinformatics were used to design possible vaccines against Zaire Ebola virus strain Mayinga-76. To construct the vaccine, three potential antigenic proteins of the virus, matrix protein VP40, envelope glycoprotein and nucleoprotein were selected against which the vaccines would be designed. The MHC class-I, MHC class-II and B-cell epitopes were determined and after robust analysis through various tools and molecular docking analysis, three vaccine candidates, designated as EV-1, EV-2 and EV-3, were constructed. Since the highly conserved epitopes were used for vaccine construction, these vaccine constructs are also expected to be effective on other strains of Ebola virus like strain Gabon-94 and Kikwit-95. Next, the molecular docking study on these vaccine constructs were analyzed by molecular docking study and EV-1 emerged as the best vaccine construct. Later, molecular dynamics simulation study revealed the good performances as well as good stability of the vaccine protein. Finally, codon adaptation and in silico cloning were conducted to design a possible plasmid (pET-19b plasmid vector was used) for large scale, industrial production of the EV-1 vaccine.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Bianchini ◽  
Francesco Balduzzi ◽  
Giovanni Ferrara ◽  
Lorenzo Ferrari ◽  
Giacomo Persico ◽  
...  

Darrieus vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have been recently identified as the most promising solution for new types of applications, such as small-scale installations in complex terrains or offshore large floating platforms. To improve their efficiencies further and make them competitive with those of conventional horizontal axis wind turbines, a more in depth understanding of the physical phenomena that govern the aerodynamics past a rotating Darrieus turbine is needed. Within this context, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can play a fundamental role, since it represents the only model able to provide a detailed and comprehensive representation of the flow. Due to the complexity of similar simulations, however, the possibility of having reliable and detailed experimental data to be used as validation test cases is pivotal to tune the numerical tools. In this study, a two-dimensional (2D) unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (U-RANS) computational model was applied to analyze the wake characteristics on the midplane of a small-size H-shaped Darrieus VAWT. The turbine was tested in a large-scale, open-jet wind tunnel, including both performance and wake measurements. Thanks to the availability of such a unique set of experimental data, systematic comparisons between simulations and experiments were carried out for analyzing the structure of the wake and correlating the main macrostructures of the flow to the local aerodynamic features of the airfoils in cycloidal motion. In general, good agreement on the turbine performance estimation was constantly appreciated.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 131-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelaaty Hamed ◽  
Mohamed Ismail ◽  
Mohammad M. El-Metwally ◽  
Marcel Frese ◽  
Tarek M.A. Ibrahim ◽  
...  

Abstract As a continuation of our earlier research concerning the investigation of microbial bioactive secondary metabolites from the terrestrial Penicillium sp.KH Link 1809 isolate KHMM, the fungus was re-cultivated on a large scale to explore its bioactive compounds intensively. Fifteen compounds, including seven alkaloids (1–7), one sesquiterpene (8), an acetylenic system (9), two sterols, and sphengolipid, were identified. Their structures were established on the bases of extensive one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and mass measurements, and by comparison with literature data. The antimicrobial activity of the fungal extract and the corresponding compounds were studied using a panel of pathogenic microorganisms, and their in vitro cytotoxicity against the human cervix carcinoma cell line (KB-3-1) was reported as well. The molecular docking of the isolated compounds showed promising affinities for the alkaloidal compounds 4–6 towards α, β tubulins.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Bianchini ◽  
Francesco Balduzzi ◽  
Giovanni Ferrara ◽  
Lorenzo Ferrari ◽  
Giacomo Persico ◽  
...  

Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) have been recently identified as the most promising solution for new types of applications, such as small-scale installations in complex terrains or offshore large floating platforms. To improve their efficiencies further and make them competitive with those of conventional horizontal axis wind turbines, a more in depth understanding of the physical phenomena that govern the aerodynamics past a rotating Darrieus turbine is needed. Within this context, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can play a fundamental role, since it represents the only model able to provide a detailed and comprehensive representation of the flow. Due to the complexity of similar simulations, however, the possibility of having reliable and detailed experimental data to be used as validation test cases is pivotal to tune the numerical tools. In this study, a two-dimensional U-RANS computational model was applied to analyze the wake characteristics on the mid plane of a small-size H-shaped Darrieus VAWT. The turbine was tested in a large-scale, open-jet wind tunnel, including both performance and wake measurements. Thanks to the availability of such a unique set of experimental data, systematic comparisons between simulations and experiments were carried out analyzing the structure of the wake, and correlating the main macro-structures of the flow to the local aerodynamic features of the airfoils in cycloidal motion. In general, good agreement on the turbine performance estimation was constantly appreciated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 1934578X2110399
Author(s):  
Bing Liu ◽  
Hao Lian

Objectives: Caesalpinia Sappan L. is a traditional Chinese medicine with a long history. Recent studies have confirmed that Sappan has an antitumor effect, but its specific mechanism is still unclear. Methods: In this study, we used network pharmacology to predict the target and signal pathway of Sappan. In addition, the Cancer Genome Atlas and cancer cell lines encyclopedia large-scale genomic databases were used to analyze the relationship between different subtypes of Akt. Based on molecular docking technology, the interaction mode between small molecule compounds and protein targets was explored. Finally, we studied the effect of Sappan on Akt protein expression by Western blot in vitro. Results: AKT1 and AKT2 were significantly expressed in breast cancer cells, but they were significantly different from AKT3. Finally, molecular docking analysis showed that (3R,5R)-1,3,4,5-tetrakis(((E)-3-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)acryloyl)oxy)cyclohexane-1-carboxylic acid had a very ideal binding mode with Akt. Subsequent experiments showed that Sappan extract could induce apoptosis of HepG2 cells in a dose-dependent manner, and down regulate the phosphorylation level of Akt protein thr308 in a dose-dependent manner. Conclusions: This study provides new ideas for Sappan's anticancer research through the strategy of system pharmacology.


2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Su Kim ◽  
Jin Hyung Park ◽  
Hwa Youn Cho ◽  
Jae Hyeon Kim ◽  
Heungrok Kwon ◽  
...  

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Samo Lešnik ◽  
Urban Bren

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) represents a medicinal plant known for its various health-promoting properties. Its extracts and essential oils exhibit antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic, and antimicrobial activities. The main compounds responsible for these effects are the diterpenes carnosic acid, carnosol, and rosmanol, as well as the phenolic acid ester rosmarinic acid. However, surprisingly little is known about the molecular mechanisms responsible for the pharmacological activities of rosemary and its compounds. To discern these mechanisms, we performed a large-scale inverse molecular docking study to identify their potential protein targets. Listed compounds were separately docked into predicted binding sites of all non-redundant holo proteins from the Protein Data Bank and those with the top scores were further examined. We focused on proteins directly related to human health, including human and mammalian proteins as well as proteins from pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites. The observed interactions of rosemary compounds indeed confirm the beforementioned activities, whereas we also identified their potential for anticoagulant and antiparasitic actions. The obtained results were carefully checked against the existing experimental findings from the scientific literature as well as further validated using both redocking procedures and retrospective metrics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Lu ◽  
Zhiqiang Wei ◽  
Cunji Wang ◽  
Jingjing Guo ◽  
Yuandong Zhou ◽  
...  

Ultra-large-scale molecular docking can improve the accuracy of lead compounds in drug discovery. In this study, we developed a molecular docking piece of software, Vina@QNLM, which can use more than 4,80,000 parallel processes to search for potential lead compounds from hundreds of millions of compounds. We proposed a task scheduling mechanism for large-scale parallelism based on Vinardo and Sunway supercomputer architecture. Then, we readopted the core docking algorithm to incorporate the full advantage of the heterogeneous multicore processor architecture in intensive computing. We successfully expanded it to 10, 465, 065 cores (1,61,001 management process elements and 0, 465, 065 computing process elements), with a strong scalability of 55.92%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that 10 million cores are used for molecular docking on Sunway. The introduction of the heterogeneous multicore processor architecture achieved the best speedup, which is 11x more than that of the management process element of Sunway. The performance of Vina@QNLM was comprehensively evaluated using the CASF-2013 and CASF-2016 protein–ligand benchmarks, and the screening power was the highest out of the 27 pieces of software tested in the CASF-2013 benchmark. In some existing applications, we used Vina@QNLM to dock more than 10 million molecules to nine rigid proteins related to SARS-CoV-2 within 8.5 h on 10 million cores. We also developed a platform for the general public to use the software.


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