Players of a 3D online computer game have provided the answer to a protein structure puzzle that could lead to new anti-retrovirus drugs.
Scientists had been struggling to map the structure of CASP9, a protein involved in a virus that causes a form of simian Aids, for more than a decade. The solution was not found by a laboratory but the players of an online puzzle game.
Foldit takes the best known models of proteins and offers them to game players, many of whom have no background in science at all. Armed with a set of tools to play with the model, the aim is to produce a version that is as stable as possible, with no molecules clashing with any others and low internal energy.
To solve the puzzle it is not necessary to know what the parts of the model represent, only how they work within the game. Each protein becomes a three-dimensional brainteaser that could be purely abstract but in fact represents a particle that occurs in the real world.
Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...0/Video-gamers-solve-microbiology-puzzle.html
Scientists had been struggling to map the structure of CASP9, a protein involved in a virus that causes a form of simian Aids, for more than a decade. The solution was not found by a laboratory but the players of an online puzzle game.
Foldit takes the best known models of proteins and offers them to game players, many of whom have no background in science at all. Armed with a set of tools to play with the model, the aim is to produce a version that is as stable as possible, with no molecules clashing with any others and low internal energy.
To solve the puzzle it is not necessary to know what the parts of the model represent, only how they work within the game. Each protein becomes a three-dimensional brainteaser that could be purely abstract but in fact represents a particle that occurs in the real world.
Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...0/Video-gamers-solve-microbiology-puzzle.html
