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Gamers Piece Together Retrovirus Enzyme Structure
An anonymous reader writes "Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, an online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. 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 scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. They did it in only three weeks."
If Stargate Command comes to your door recruiting, best bet is to politely turn them down.
I'm sure that, despite figuring out the protein structure, that the gamers won't receive any of the patent royalties that the patent will likely generate.
There is no substitute for human ingenuity, which is captured by crowd sourcing. Kudos to whoever managed to make folding protein structures entertaining enough to capture the interest of enough people to make it feasible. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
According to Popovic, “Foldit shows that a game can turn novices into domain experts capable of producing first-class scientific discoveries. We are currently applying the same approach to change the way math and science are taught in school.”
On the "just kidding" track: if that could happen, I wonder how the exams will look like? Will they resemble a FPS?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
What you're calling for is like saying we should name planets after the first people who looked at them, because they knew they were there even though they didn't know anything else about them.
I take that back, that was a crappy analogy. After all, in this situation all the gamers did was offer up CPU time towards solving the protein folding problem for this specific enzyme. They didn't even look at anything, really. They didn't even necessarily have any idea what they were actually doing with their spare CPU cycles in the grand scheme of things.
Really, the notion that they should be compensated for what they voluntarily donated is worse than suggesting that any Nobel Prize for which an acceptance speech was written in Microsoft Word should be automatically shared with Bill Gates.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
so eat my shorts!
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan armada.
Well, I guess I can throw away the DVDs of Stargate Universe I was saving up for Christmas vacation.
Next time, how 'bout a little spoiler alert, yeah?
You are welcome on my lawn.
FPS Crowdsourcing - Build better drone logic, add some humanoid bots, build massive skilled army!
RTS Crowdsourcing - Solve the whole 'nationalism and dick waving' contest one civ game at a time!
Racing Games Crowdsourcing - Design better robot drivers and automate all vehicles, lower traffic fatalities!
Angry Birds Crowdsourcing - Design better projectile systems for the military!
Farmville Crowdsourcing - Make the people that partake in this one play until they die from starvation, eliminating half the 1st world population and donating their wealth to people who are actually starving!!!! (Reverse logic on this one)
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I "played" this for several months after it first came out. Was reasonably good, not one of the top players but often in the top 30 to 100. Stopped after they added an awful and intolerable music score to it, and gave no way to disable the music. Muting the entire computer wasn't a real option, both because other sound effects made by the "game" were important feedback and because muting would impact other things running on the same computer. Multiple requests to give an option to disable the music (or other alternatives like just removing it) were completely ignored without response. Knowing that if I listened to the "music" any longer I was likely to start killing people, I decided it was prudent to stop running the program. So my question is have they fixed the "music" yet and who decided it was important to force their music choice on all folders rather than just let us run our choice of music players and music on our computers if we wanted music.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Kudos to the gamers.
From Wikipedia: "Foldit is an experimental video game about protein folding, developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry (many of the same people who created Rosetta@home)."
Most likely, there will be a scientific paper containing the results, and as far as I know, scientific research papers are public (or maybe require a fee to read). Now drug companies can use these results to try to come up with a drug to fight HIV, which would then not be public domain. Am I off on this?
What makes the Pokemon enzyme works? A mythical particles called slashdotters pokemones offtopicus.
because it's a good bonding experience.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Thanks for the information. Shame that they didn't bother to respond to those who complained and asked for this, not even bothering to send an e-mail to those who complained of it after they made the fix. I haven't been folding in several years now, not sure if I want to start over again after all this lost time
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
When I first heard of Foldit I really hoped that something would come of it. I thought that if their models were correct that it could be a great tool, and it looks like it is.
Most likely, there will be a scientific paper containing the results, and as far as I know, scientific research papers are public (or maybe require a fee to read).
Yes, they require a fee to read - in this case, $32 - and yes, scientists are just as unhappy about this as everyone else, but we have no other way to prove our worth to prospective employers, funding agencies, and tenure committees other than prominent publications. However, the actual structure (including experimental data) is deposited in a public database, as required by every major journal in the field, and should be available shortly. (There is usually a little bit of lag time before these depositions are released to the public, but rarely more than a couple of weeks.)
Actually, I forgot to mention that since this research is almost certainly NIH-funded, the article is required to be made public in the near future by depositing the manuscript in PubMed Central. I forget whether the requirement is six months or a year after publication - until then, it remains exclusive to Nature Publishing Group - but eventually it will be freely available.
Old hat. They did this ages ago on Stargate Universe :P
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
I forget whether the requirement is six months or a year after publication - until then, it remains exclusive to Nature Publishing Group - but eventually it will be freely available.
Sounds like a mini-copyright is present in scientific publications.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
make it more of a RPG or possibly puzzle game.
Oh, so that's why Pocoyo is playing with tetrominoes at the start of each episode: Tetris is his preschool homework.
Harness the power of obsessive gamers around the world! Seriously, Starcraft 2 alone is already almost a national sport in some Asian countries.
Now the programmers have to take Foldit to the next level: Cancer Wars! Whomever creates the best omni-purpose cancer fighter that doesn't blow apart the landscape(human body) wins!
And after that? Virus Cataclysm -- the viruses are invading and YOU are your body's last hope!
Maybe even: Reconstructors -- the body is failing and it's up to the player to restore it as good as new. (Yes, old age is the enemy)
Finally, the hardest game of all: US Economy Simulator! (You ever imagine politicians solving a protein problem much less the U.S. national debt? Yeah, didn't think so.)
There was a US economy/world simulator.
I forgot the name though.
The easiest way to make progress in the game was to forgo any military for 4 years or so, and invest the money in the economy. After that you could literally bribe Cuba and whatever small nation you wanted to make them like you.
Such an on and off control is unlikely to happen in real life.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I've heard the protein folding problem is quite likely NPC. How can people with slow brains outperform the best algorithms and computers of our day?