May 6 3:56 P.M.
Game addiction is usually thought of as a bad thing, but get hooked on this free, downloadable puzzle game, and you might end up with a Nobel prize.
Gaming for the cure
The game's name is Foldit, a 3D puzzle game developed by a University of Washington team that pits teams of players against one another in a quest for high scores. It doesn't look very different to many popular 3D puzzles, but under the surface its players are actually working on solutions to one of modern biochemistry's biggest questions.
Foldit's puzzles deal with protein folding, the vital but poorly understood process by which protein chains -- some of the most important molecules in biology -- coil themselves into compact shapes. Because these shapes determine the function of the protein, a better understanding of the principles behind protein folding stands to help researchers better understand diseases like cancer and AIDS. The better the structure players find, the higher the score they earn.
Projects like Folding@Home have put spare computing power from home PCs and video game consoles to work on the problem, but Foldit actually harnesses the brainpower of its players.
"We’re collecting data to find out if humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever," says the game's site.
Currently, Foldit's 100,000-plus players are working on existing proteins. But a forthcoming update will allow them to actually design their own proteins in response to challenges set by the game's makers -- challenges that might involve finding proteins that scrub carbon dioxide from the air, or disable the virus that causes HIV. Who knows: maybe the next Nobel laureate could be a Foldit savant.
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Posted: 6 May 2009
