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Protein Pwnage!
Scientists at the University of Washington spent years letting supercomputers try to solve the mysterious puzzle of protein folding, a important key to curing the world's worst neurological diseases. When the supercomputers fell short, they tried something revolutionary: They gave the puzzle to video gamers.
"Folding" is the process by which proteins assemble themselves from amino acids to peptides to something useful. If all goes well, we get proteins that make, oh say, a blood vessel wall or an enzyme. When a protein folds itself incorrectly, however, it becomes a useless clump of peptides that drifts through the blood stream, often winding up trapped in the tiny capillaries of the brain. These misfolded proteins can be toxic to brain cells and cause disease. Many neurological illnesses—Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and even Mad Cow disease, are caused by the faulty folding of proteins.
The Human Genome Project gave us the ingredient list for all the proteins that make us human beings who we are—but left us without the recipe. And as scientists in this field will tell you, the recipe for a well-folded protein is wickedly complex, the sort of thing that makes the most creative French cuisine look like a sliced ham sandwich.
The solution? Biochemists at the University of Washington teamed up with their colleagues in the computer science department to develop the free video game called Foldit, a Tetris-like puzzle game that allows video gamers to attempt protein folding themselves. Points are awarded for successful folds, gamers can compete for top scores against their counterparts around the globe, and the most successful users are able to create their own synthetic proteins. The UW scientists then studied the comparable merits of the video gamers to the supercomputers working on the same puzzle.
The results? When a protein-folding task required certain choices—cognitive leaps of faith, long-term vision, or major shifts in strategy—human beings performed far better than supercomputers. Over 50,000 players have participated, and the UW lab overseeing the project has already tried to manufacture one of the synthetic proteins designed by an avid gamer in Texas.
The future? That's where things get really exciting. As time progresses, video game designers will find creative ways to build games that reward both the user and society as a whole. Imagine your teenager, with their usual glassy-eyed stare and ape-like grip on a game controller, playing a racing-car game that solves the world's fossil fuel dependency problem, or a game like Resident Evil in which gamers collectively create the vaccine for a real-world biohazard.
Results of the University of Washington study were published in the August 5, 2010 issue of the journal Nature. To play or find more information about Foldit, visit http://fold.it or their YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/uwfoldit.
Other ways to get involved? Visit the University of Washington's Rosetta@Home website or Stanford University's Folding@Home website, where you can download a small piece of software or screensaver that will allow your home computer to become part of a distributed computing network—creating some of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet.
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Copyright Ron S. Doyle.
