Gamers crack AIDS virus enzyme puzzle...reason to get your kids playing vids...lol
 

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.

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."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/online-game...175427367.html

Pretty amazing.

i cant find the link right now, but i remember reading about a student at university of toronto, using a computer simulation to cure some disease. Then they gave him lab time to test it, and wollah, he had cured some fairly bad disease.

I will look around for the article.

good things coming in the future

Just imagine when the US army develops remotely piloted droid ground soldiers. There's an entire generation trained up on first person shooters and ready to pilot them.

Well shit, that's just incredible.

That scientist needs to hook up with the creators of the big game studios. Imagine what millions of minds could do if the game maze represented DNA and such.

I read about this last night. Fucking amazing!

Indeed. Wars of the future will be fought by legions of pasty white basement-dwelling kids with monitor-tanned faces.

This was an interesting read. Thanks!

what do you think drones are? still too expensive to create an army of them though, that is probably a good thing however. :)

If that is all true and it pans out, there will be break throughs in other areas as well. Alot of sick people out there.

that is cool. just need to scale up and replace the current crop of violent performance test games with something more productive, like this.

yeah this is mega cool.
i love the new stuff that is coming out these days. If you let the kids/gamers organise into teams and then published the ones to solve important pieces, it could lead into a frenzy of people joining together to pull stuff off like this.

i worked in a guys lab when i was going to university that was working on stuff like this. Finding the enzyme that helps the virus replicate and brings the tRNA across the ribosome....anyway...i washed his beakers..lol

this is fn awesome, thanks for sharing!

And the basement dwellers shall rule the earth!

When I'm Playing COD on Xbox I'll feel more productive now... haha

Good stuff though! would be great to be able to walk in a strip club, take any girl home and not worry about getting anything...

Very cool! And great to see something science related on GFY :thumbsup

Very cool. But they would have solved it in two weeks if they hadn't wasted the first week in a flame-war about who's more l33t and who's banging who's mom. :)

Clarified for accuracy.