Your PS3 may one day save lives.

We've told you before about the Stanford University chemistry department's Folding@Home (FAH) distributed computing project that turns your PC into a part-time medical research computer for analyzing proteins. (Yes, we at QJ also take time to worry and care about the bigger picture, so some of us have donated our own computers to the project.) Now FAH wants to enlist the computing and graphics power of the next-gen PlayStation in its research of proteins and diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and certain forms of cancer.

Sony will be providing software that will turn your personal gaming console into a client computer of the FAH project. While the Cell microprocessor crunches the chemistry, the graphics chip displays the actual folding process of the protein molecule in real-time - a first for FAH. If your curiosity gets the better of you - or you happen to be interested in medical chemistry - you can navigate the 3D space of the simulated molecule using your PS3 controller.