Evolution@Home

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Evolution@Home is the first global computing project for evolutionary biology. Global computing is a form of Internet distributed computing that distributes the computational workload to the CPUs of many voluntary participants. In order to participate one requires a web-enabled PC. The aim of Evolution@Home is to improve understanding of evolutionary processes. This is achieved by simulating individual-based models. The first such model targets the accumulation of mutations in asexual populations and is implemented in Simulator005. The software of Evolution@Home is not the first to simulate this, but previous simulations were hampered by lack of memory (needed for looking at large populations) and lack of computing power (needed for observing long-term evolution and many different parameter combinations). The possibility of global computing has allowed Evolution@Home to move the realism of simulated parameter combinations significantly towards observed reality.

Currently the project is operated semi-automatically, which means that a participant has to manually download tasks from the webpage and submit results by email. Development of a fully automated version is under way, but has repeatedly been delayed for a number of reasons.