title: Cloud4Psi: cloud computing for 3D protein structure similarity searching.
abstract: CONCLUSIONS
  Popular methods for 3D protein structure similarity searching, especially those that generate high-quality alignments such as Combinatorial Extension (CE) and Flexible structure Alignment by Chaining Aligned fragment pairs allowing Twists (FATCAT) are still time consuming. As a consequence, performing similarity searching against large repositories of structural data requires increased computational resources that are not always available. Cloud computing provides huge amounts of computational power that can be provisioned on a pay-as-you-go basis. We have developed the cloud-based system that allows scaling of the similarity searching process vertically and horizontally. Cloud4Psi (Cloud for Protein Similarity) was tested in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment and provided good, almost linearly proportional acceleration when scaled out onto many computational units.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cloud4Psi is available as Software as a Service for testing purposes at: http://cloud4psi.cloudapp.net/. For source code and software availability, please visit the Cloud4Psi project home page at http://zti.polsl.pl/dmrozek/science/cloud4psi.htm.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka 16, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland.
authors.forename: Dariusz
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mrozek
authors.affiliation: Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka 16, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland.
authors.forename: Bożena
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Małysiak-Mrozek
authors.affiliation: Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka 16, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland.
authors.forename: Artur
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kłapciński
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003199:Computer Systems; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins