Nutritious Rice for the World
The intent is to help farmers breed better rice strains with higher crop yields, promote greater disease and pest resistance, and utilize a full range of bioavailable nutrients that can benefit people around the world, especially in regions where malnutrition is a critical concern.The Computational Biology Research Group at the University of Washington developed the Protinfo[6] software, which can produce protein structures at a fraction of the cost and time.The models, and any analysis resulting from examining them, will be housed at the Bioverse database and webserver, which is a comprehensive framework to relate molecules such as proteins and DNA to an organism's pathways and systems.Volunteers' computers on World Community Grid will run the Protinfo software to create models of all proteins encoded by the rice genome whose structure can be predicted reliably.The resulting knowledge base will hopefully lead to the development of improved hybrids of rice strains with higher yield, greater disease and pest resistance, and a full range of bioavailable nutrients.