THINK—THINK is a drug discovery software program. The program appraises each of hundreds of millions of molecules to see if they are likely to interact with a target protein. THINK calculates and studies the many possible shapes, or conformers, the molecule might adopt interacting with the protein. This process is called virtual screening of the molecules.

Conformers—THINK explores the 3-dimensional shapes each molecule might adopt. Each new shape of the molecules may help the right parts of the molecule interact with the protein target. THINK does this very fast-so fast your monitor can't show every molecule or conformation. This is why the conformation number is moving so rapidly. The total number of conformations differs molecule to molecule. Some molecules may have more bonds or flexibility, and thus will have more conformers.

Current Molecule—The 3-dimensional images on the left are representations of real molecules. The representations are made up of various atoms and bonds, which appear as colored balls put together with sticks. The "sticks" represent the bonds between the atoms. The "balls" represent different atomic elements that make up the molecule, with different colors to represent specific elements.

Molecular name—There are hundreds of millions of molecules being processed. There are so many that identifiers, rather then names, are used to track them. The characters that follow the words "current molecule" indicate the molecule that THINK is currently screening.

Current Protein Target—The image at right of the screen represents a protein that the molecules may interact with. The protein has already been determined to be a possible target for cancer therapy. It is one of only a few protein targets that the millions of molecules are screened against for this project, so the same protein target will be featured on the screen saver for a while.

Atomic legend—What elements make up each molecule? You can map the molecules' elemental components by using the legend, which color codes the elements. There are several primary elements that make up all biological molecules, which can be seen on the legend: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur.

The United Device software is available fron two web sites: http://www.grid.org/download/gold/

Hits—When a molecular conformation docks successfully and triggers an interaction with the protein, it registers as a "hit." Hits have different levels of strength, but any one hit may be the one that will ultimately lead to a cure. All hits are all recorded, ranked for strength of interaction, and filed for the next stage of the project.

De novo structures—Sometimes a molecule may have extra potential if it slightly altered in some way. THINK considers small variations or atom substitutions to increase the number of molecules being evaluated. These new altered molecules are de novo derivatives, or structures, which are also tracked on the screensaver.

Progress bar—The bar along the bottom of the molecule graphic shows how far along in the work unit your PC has progressed. A work unit is comprised of several molecules. The molecules may vary considerably in size and number of conformers, with the more flexible molecules taking longer to compute. This variety in molecules is what accounts for the variety of time it may take to complete different work units.

Buttons—The buttons on the graphic interface allow access to more information about the project and the work your specific computer is doing. This includes information on how it compares to other computers, and what your Agent preferences are, which is how you want the Agent to run on your machine.