- Sep 16, 2010
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http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/2011/09/19/foldit-yields-aids-breakthrough-40093970/
Foldit, which makes protein folding into an immersive online game playable by the general public, has helped discover information with implications for the design of better AIDs drugs.
...
The breakthrough, which was presented in a paper in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (PDF) and announced by Foldit on Sunday, saw online gamers complete a challenge in three weeks that had puzzled scientists for over a decade.
"After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players," the University of Washington wrote in a press release on Sunday. "This class of enzymes, called retroviral proteases, has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates. Intensive research is under way to try to find anti-AIDS drugs that can block these enzymes, but efforts were hampered by not knowing exactly what the retroviral protease molecule looks like."
Foldit gamers were able to create a protein model that was "good enough" for researchers to refine into a workable model, the University of Washington said. Foldit was created by the University of Washington's Centre for Game Science in collaboration with the Baker Lab in 2008.
"The critical role of Foldit players in the solution of the M-PMV PR structure shows the power of online games to channel human intuition and three-dimensional pattern-matching skills to solve challenging scientific problems," the researchers wrote in the paper. "Although much attention has recently been given to the potential of crowdsourcing and game playing, this is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem."
Foldit, which makes protein folding into an immersive online game playable by the general public, has helped discover information with implications for the design of better AIDs drugs.
...
The breakthrough, which was presented in a paper in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (PDF) and announced by Foldit on Sunday, saw online gamers complete a challenge in three weeks that had puzzled scientists for over a decade.
"After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players," the University of Washington wrote in a press release on Sunday. "This class of enzymes, called retroviral proteases, has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates. Intensive research is under way to try to find anti-AIDS drugs that can block these enzymes, but efforts were hampered by not knowing exactly what the retroviral protease molecule looks like."
Foldit gamers were able to create a protein model that was "good enough" for researchers to refine into a workable model, the University of Washington said. Foldit was created by the University of Washington's Centre for Game Science in collaboration with the Baker Lab in 2008.
"The critical role of Foldit players in the solution of the M-PMV PR structure shows the power of online games to channel human intuition and three-dimensional pattern-matching skills to solve challenging scientific problems," the researchers wrote in the paper. "Although much attention has recently been given to the potential of crowdsourcing and game playing, this is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem."
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