Next time someone chides you for spending too much time playing games online, you might respond by telling him or her that you are trying to save the world…literally. Reports on CBCNews and other outlets tell of a new game in which players work together to solve problems in molecular biology, most recently cracking a major problem in the biology of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS:
“This is the first instance we are aware of in which online gamers solved a long-standing scientific problem,” said a blog posting on the website for Foldit, the protein folding game that tapped the gamers’ skills to solve the puzzle.
“This is truly an amazing accomplishment,” added another blog posting on the site. “All Foldit players should be proud.”
A paper describing the solution was published online Sunday in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. It specifically cited the contributions of gamers known by the usernames spvincent, grabhorn and mimi.
Foldit is a game released by University of Washington biochemist David Baker and his colleagues in 2009. Players compete and co-operate to find the best ways to fold a protein into a 3D structure based on the laws of physics. The shape of a folded protein is crucial to its function as a lock or key in biological processes.
The problem solved by Foldit players recently involved a protein from the virus that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys. The protein, called a retroviral protease, has “critical roles in viral maturation and proliferation,” the paper said. Researchers have been trying to figure out its shape for 15 years.
Foldit players managed to solve the puzzle in just a few days. Their solution was confirmed as the correct one by comparing the X-ray pattern it would have produced to the actual X-ray pattern produced by the protein.
Once the province of screen-savers such as the one used by the SETI Institute to analyze radio data from antennae searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life, programs such as Foldit open entirely new frontiers for citizen science.
We would like to hear from our readers about what other kinds of problems could be tackled in this kind of distributed fashion.
A screenshot from the game shows the puzzle involving the monkey virus protein. Image: Firas Khatib/University of Washington.
