Foldit: gamers contribute to medical research

[Lantern]

Never heard of this before but what an absolutely brilliant idea! The University of Washington created a Tetris-like game called Folditabout protein-folding.

The game, Foldit, turns one of the hardest problems in molecular biology into a game a bit reminiscent of Tetris. Thousands of people have now played a game that asks them to fold a protein rather than stack colored blocks or rescue a princess.

Results published Thursday (Aug. 5) in the journal Nature show that Foldit is a success. It turns out that people can, indeed, compete with supercomputers in this arena. Analysis shows that players bested the computers on problems that required radical moves, risks and long-term vision – the kinds of qualities that computers do not possess.

Now, Foldit players will focus on designing novel proteins. Last year a Texas player who goes by the name "BootsMcGraw"was the first Foldit player to have his new protein design synthesized in the Baker lab. Although this particular structure did not work, the researchers plan to try again and are optimistic about the possibilities.

"I think that design problems are an area where human computing has huge potential,"Baker said. "People are good at building things, so I’m expecting that people will be very good at building proteins for different purposes. That’s where I’m expecting really great things from Foldit.”

Players may someday design proteins to disable the flu virus or tackle HIV, or perform tasks outside the body such as cleaning up waste or generating energy.

We really do live in an age of technological wonder. Anyone play this game?

[Interconnected_Series_of_Tubes]

Cool! Downloading it now, I’ll let you know whether I can compete with a supercomputer or not.

[dzero]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but just read yet another article about it in the December SciAm.

It seems that while a lot of valuable work in research on protein folding is being done by volunteers at distributed computing project Folding@Home and World Community Grid, humans are much better at finding the correct shapes for proteins than computers.

Created at the University of Washington, the game gives you a few simple rules to follow and a box of basic tools. From that you find the correct (lowest energy I think) structure for known proteins.

When asked if some of the gamers participating might one day share a Nobel Prize, he said that it was their “greatest hope.”

I’ve been trying to learn how to use the tools they provide in the game but I haven’t really gotten a feel for it yet. I think it would come much easier to people who are accustomed to 3D gaming.

[Lantern]

Foldit players manageto solve a longstanding problem in AIDS research in just ten days.