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Drugs function by binding to specific locations on target molecules and causing a certain desired change.

Ideally, a drug should act very specifically and bind only to its target without interfering with other biological functions.

However, it is difficult to precisely determine where and how tightly two molecules will bind.

Due to limitations in computational power, current in silico approaches usually have to trade speed for accuracy ; e. g. use rapid protein docking methods instead of computationally expensive free energy calculations.

Folding @ home's computational performance allows researchers to use both techniques, and evaluate their efficiency and reliability.

Computer-assisted drug design has the potential to expedite and lower the costs of drug discovery.

In 2010, Folding @ home used MSMs and free energy calculations to predict the native state of the villin protein to within 1. 8 Å RMSD from the crystalline structure experimentally determined through X-ray crystallography.

This may be important to future protein structure prediction approaches, including for intrinsically unstructured proteins.

Scientists have used Folding @ home to research drug resistance by studying vancomycin, an antibiotic of " last resort ", and beta-lactamase, a protein that can break down antibiotics like penicillin.