Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

**michael h** · 09-20-2011

Who would have thought all those wasted hours gaming would come in handy? Gamers do what computers could not ... provide a little spatial reasoning ... well done.

Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle
By AFP | Plugged In – 14 hours ago
Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle | Games Blog - Yahoo! Games

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."

**JDJarvis** · 09-20-2011

Interesting. Gamers do spend an awful lot of time exploring and interacting with virtual 3-D environments so they are definitely a group to help in tackling 3-D problems it would seem.

**El_Zoido** · 09-20-2011

There are several studies and experiments that proof the power of crowd sourcing the talents of people in purpouse driven (game like) scenarios.
The difficulty is to ask the question in a way that allows to utilize that potential and leads to the right answers.

The creativity unleashed by indi-games like Minecraft also comes to mind.

**Sluggo** · 09-20-2011

Originally Posted by El_Zoido

There are several studies and experiments that proof the power of crowd sourcing the talents of people in purpouse driven (game like) scenarios.
The difficulty is to ask the question in a way that allows to utilize that potential and leads to the right answers.

The creativity unleashed by indi-games like Minecraft also comes to mind.

There is some truth to this. When it comes to 3D puzzle gaming you already have a real following of gamers all determined to win the game, and willing to invest a huge amount of time doing so repeatedly. You put all those people to a single task in competition, I am personally surprised it took them as long as it did regardless of "the astonishment of scientists" at the speed in which these gamers got it done.