AUGUST 05, 2010
Protein-Folding Game Taps Power of Worldwide Audience to Solve Difficult Puzzles
A cooperative online game that puts volunteer “gamers” to work folding proteins has attracted 50,000 players whose “distributed thinking” has, in some cases, proven more powerful than computers in predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Extension of these efforts could one day pay off in the design of new proteins that help fight disease, sequester carbon, or clean up the environment.
The free game, called Foldit, is the brainchild of David Baker, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute biologist, and colleagues Zoran Popovic and Seth Cooper, who are in the computer science department at the University of Washington. The online community of Foldit players is now helping the researchers as they attempt to crack “the protein-folding problem,” one of molecular biology’s toughest challenges.
“The positive response to Foldit makes me very optimistic for getting the general public involved in science,” says Baker. “There's a lot of creativity and energy out there that is being spent on computer games that could go into solving scientific problems. I’m very pleased we’ve been able to harness some of that energy.”
Proteins are the miniature machines that carry out almost all the important functions in the body. Scientists have long known that the three-dimensional structures of proteins are completely determined by their linear amino acid sequence. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Researchers now know the amino acid sequence of every protein encoded in the human genome. Until recently, however, it seemed nearly impossible to compute the structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences, and solving this problem has been one of Baker’s obsessions.
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Read more here/Leia mais aqui: Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
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