Structural Biology Grid provides a parallel computing grid for all participating laboratories. We are a Virtual Organization (VO) of the Open Science Grid. Our local resources at Harvard include include five clusters: a 114-CPU MacIntel cluster, a 28-CPU 64-bit OS X cluster, a 40-CPU Xeon cluster, a 50-CPU 64-bit Opteron cluster and a 30-CPU 32-bit Athlon cluster. Clusters are fully integrated into a unified grid using United Devices GridMP software. File transfer and all computations are handled seamlessly in the setup. The grid is supplemented by 10+TB of RAID storage and the full distribution of SBGrid software.
We routinely utilize the grid for Electron Microscopy computations (Frealign), in X-ray crystallography for optimizing refinement parameters and highly parallel composite omit map calculations and molecular replacement searches (CNS Solve), and in NMR for performing batch structure refinements (X-plor). Additional parallel computation routines can be added based on user requests. Additional computing clusters will be added in the very near future that will further expand our currently available resources.
The grid resources were most recently used in number of projects including transferin receptor (HMS Focus), high-resolution clathrin (HMS), HIV gp120 protein (Children's Hospital) and lens junction (HMS Focus).
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- Fotin, A., Y. Cheng, P. Sliz, N. Grigorieff, S. C. Harrison, T. Kirchhausen and T. Walz (2004). "Molecular model for a complete clathrin lattice from electron cryomicroscopy." Nature 432(7017): 573-9.
- Gonen, T., P. Sliz, J. Kistler, Y. Cheng and T. Walz (2004). "Aquaporin-0 membrane junctions reveal the structure of a closed water pore." Nature 429(6988): 193-7.
