Gamers have solved all sorts of puzzles, but none as impressive as what was reported the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: The structure of an AIDS-like virus was decoded by gamers. Using a game developed by the University of Washington called “Foldit“, gamers — using human spatial reasoning — achieved in three weeks what scientists had been trying to decipher for a decade.
“Foldit” 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. One of its creators, Seth Cooper, explained, “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.”
[Editor’s Note: GLaDOS would be proud.]
[Source: Yahoo News]
