Thread: Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

Photo by AFP
The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.

Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

This is where Foldit comes in.

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.

"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."

source: Yahoo.com

Pretty interesting read, right? lol

It's amazing what gamers can do, lulz.

of course they were able to do this faster than scientists could do with their computers.
a load of PC gamers spend more on GPUs than most people do on their cars. and scientists doing this sort of research are in short supply. people with this skill set are not.

I knew my skills in FPS wouldn't go to waste,now I just have to wait for an HIV killer game using microscopic M4s lol.
These are great news indeed,but it makes me wonder.If scientists and gamers could figure out the retroviruss' structure while working separately,what could they acomplish if they were to co-operate on a daily basis???

Originally Posted by GameMasterDante

I knew my skills in FPS wouldn't go to waste,now I just have to wait for an HIV killer game using microscopic M4s lol.
These are great news indeed,but it makes me wonder.If scientists and gamers could figure out the retroviruss' structure while working separately,what could they acomplish if they were to co-operate on a daily basis???

3.60+ keys, maybe?? lmfao

Originally Posted by Lightyear

3.60+ keys, maybe?? lmfao

with this sort of distributed computing I doubt that it would take as long as a day if it were set up in the correct way.

What the article said:

Originally Posted by PAiN42O

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "

What I read:

Originally Posted by PAiN42O

"We wanted to see if humans are smarter than the machines they created. DERP"

i'm quite sceptic if the source is yahoo

but if's it true, then maybe all doctor or scientist could work together in the Lab and gamer could gain money taht way... it would be like killing two bird in one stone

Originally Posted by namelessnet

i'm quite sceptic if the source is yahoo

but if's it true, then maybe all doctor or scientist could work together in the Lab and gamer could gain money taht way... it would be like killing two bird in one stone

that would not work. this is like if the scientists set up a computer program to crack a really long hash in a distributed pattern.(like folding@home) except in this case certain things needed to be identified that couldn't be done with computers(human brains are great at patterns. it's how we remember faces) so that all the work done by all of these different computers (gamers usually have really good GPUs which are great at number crunching) fits together and comes back fully done.