Researchers use Macs to study proteins

A McGill University research lab uses Macs to study the structure of proteins during cell division; the team uses powerful microscopes, high-resolution digital cameras and Power Mac G5s to learn more about the complex molecular activities that cause cancer. The lab utilizes two Xserve G5 servers, four 5.6TB Xserve RAID units and six Power Mac G5 desktop systems linked together with Fibre Channel through a QLogic SANBox 5200 16-port Fibre Channel switch. Vogel configured the Xsan and Xserve RAIDs using Mac OS X server tools herself, without the aid of a system administrator. Researchers depend on a program called Volocity to study captured frames from microscopes, an image and data analysis software application by Improvision. The graphics-intensive software suite was written to take advantage of the PowerPC G5 processor and is at the core of Vogel's all-Mac system.

Filed under: software
Other story tags: Scientific/Research