Smittee has been doing this for a while now. Her boyfriend has been doing it for, I think, two years now. It's both simple and makes you feel good.
Stafford University (and some other universities) have programs you can download. Stafford specifically has its for folding proteins. What happens is it opens up to your tray, at the bottom of your compy. You can also display it to show the protein on your screen, but that takes up more ram. if it's on the tray, it uses very little energy. As long as it's open, it's folding proteins. That info is recorded and is sent to the Universities database into one compy. It's kind of like making a super computer from a bunch of little computers. Then, that data helps us better understand different diseases and things the body does, like getting Alzheimer(sp). It's safe. I haven't had any, nor have I heard anybody having problems with it.
You can set up teams too! If our community would like, we could even set up a Dokuga team!
Here's the link for more information:
folding.stanford.edu/