Foldit - play video games and contribute to medicine

Do you like video games? And also want to solve problems for science? A new game, called Foldit, transforms protein folding into a competitive sport. The introductory level teaches rules that have the same physical laws that according to these laws, protein fibers curl and twist into 3-dimensional shapes - the key to the biological secret from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of practice, people will feel like people are playing video games but actually clicking on the name of medicine.

The game was developed by PhD student Seth Cooper and researcher Adrien Treuille, both specializing in computer science and manufacturing, along with University of Washington associate professor Zoran Popovic and home. Research at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Professor David Salesin of the University of Washington. These professional game designers give advice in the process of creating this game.

'We hope to change the way science is done and its implementers,' said Professor Popovic, who presented the project at Baltimore's Games for Health conference. 'Our ultimate goal is to let ordinary people play the game and eventually they will become candidates for the Nobel Prize.'

(Photo: Fold.it)

Proteins have more than 100,000 different types in the human body, forming each cell, forming the immune system and setting the rate of chemical reactions. We know many protein sequences of proteins, but don't know how they fold into complex shapes whose corners and gaps play an extremely important biological role.

Computer simulators calculate all possible forms of protein, but this is so big a problem that all computers in the world will take centuries to solve it. In 2005, Professor Baker developed a project called Rosetta @ home that takes advantage of volunteer computer time around the world but even 200,000 volunteers are not enough.

'There is so much possibility that computers cannot go one by one,' said Professor Baker. 'Methods like Rosetta @ home only work well on small proteins, but as the protein gets bigger and bigger, it's getting harder and harder and often the computer will fail.'

Rosetta @ home and Foldit both use Rosetta protein folding software. Foldit is the first protein folding project to ask volunteers something more than a Playstation. Foldit is also different from recent computer and human interaction games that use human ability to identify images or interpret a piece of text. Instead, Foldit uses the skills of man to solve three-dimensional natural problems.

Intuitive skills that help someone to play Foldit are not necessarily the best skills to create a leading biologist. Professor Baker said his 13-year-old son folded proteins faster than he did. And others may be even faster.

Finally, the researchers hope to develop science by exploring excellent protein folding people, who naturally have the ability to see proteins in three-dimensional images.

The game looks like a Tetris version of the 21st century. A team of six college and graduate students from Washington University took a year to figure out how to make the game both accurate. just attractive. They faced a number of special challenges that commercial game developers did not encounter.

Nearly 1,000 players have tested the system in recent weeks, using proteins with known shapes. However, starting last week, game developers released the game and released proteins with unknown shapes.

Starting in the fall, the Foldit problems will expand in the creation of new proteins that we expect to exist - enzymes that can break down toxic waste, for example, or suck carbon dioxide from zero. gas. Computers alone cannot design a protein from scratch. The game lets the computer help when it is a simple optimization problem - let the player focus on interesting moves.

Finally, the researchers hope to bring out the inevitable enemy of medicine, such as HIV or malaria, and challenge players to think of an ideal shape protein to lock the virus and make it for it doesn't work. Winning protein designs will be synthesized in Baker's lab and tested in petri dishes. High-scoring players will be recognized in scientific papers.

Foldit also includes a multiplayer game, in which people can team up, chat with other players and create online profiles. Researchers will analyze the moves to see how top players solve the problem. This information will be reflected back in the game's design so the game formats and tools can grow.

This research was funded by DARPA National Defense Research Projects Administration, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Microsoft and Adobe Systems Inc., along with Nvidia Corp. members. and Intel Corp.