i'm not a scientist, but i am sure that one science can give benefits to another science.

i don't think your question can be exactly answered right now. but possibly...

1. studying the genomes could (one day) show why some people have more immunity than others to AIDS.

2. it might contribute to finding a vaccine or genetic treatment.

just my opinion...

Dear Colleagues,

In the FightAIDS@Home Project, researchers are looking for molecules that interact with the HIV protease in a way that blocks its activity, stopping the virus from maturing. In my opinion, little information from the GC project will be directly useful to the FightAIDS@Home Project, since both projects deal with theirs problems with very different approaches. However, it is true that a good identification of the proteins and their role in the different metabolic processes can help other researchers to study several other biological aspects, including host-parasite interactions and the mechanisms of immunity. It is also true that this will help to elucidate only part of the problem, since it is becoming more and more clear to the scientific community that other parts of the genome, in particular non-coding regions (including RNA-coding regions), are very important in the regulation of several cellular processes. Due to the size and complexity of these regions (the “language” by which information is stored in these regions is poorly understood; in fact, most of these regions were first identified experimentally, and only later their position in the genome determined), this subset of the genomes is not under comparison in the GC project, though a small part of non-coding regions, the larger ORFs, will be compared among themselves.

Cheers,

Antonio Miranda
Genome Comparison Team

FightAIDS@Home was asked a similar question about Genome Comparison and answered in this post: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=10904#82519