Most of us have a favorite mindless
video game -- some farm digital
crops on facebook; others shoot mad birds with a slingshot. What if we could
turn those hours and hours of screen time into something of good use? Within a two-week
span during September 2011, gamers have solved problems in the biological and
astronomical fields. Players of a protein-folding game called Foldit developed
by the University of Washington generated a number of possible molecular models
for an enzyme that retroviruses like HIV use to replicate themselves. Players
of a game called Planet Hunters, developed by Yale and collaborators, also
discovered two new planet candidates outside our solar system. Both of these games used crowd-sourcing:
a large group of people performs tasks and solves problems traditionally done
by a specific person.
A large part of scientific research
is trying to piece together how things work, whether in terms of mechanisms of
action or three-dimensional structures. Foldit allows players to manipulate the
3D structure of a protein for ‘points’ when they get an ideal structure. The
program constantly updates with new puzzles based on protein structures, and
players can work alone or share ideas in groups.
As described in the September Nature Structural and Molecular Biology,
Foldit players discovered molecular models for a retroviral protease (what
viruses like HIV use for replication), whose structure had eluded scientists
for years. Researchers at the University of Washington asked a group of Foldit
players to submit models to the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein
Structure Prediction, an experiment that takes place every two years where the
amino acid sequence of a protein is posted, and teams must find the closest
match to a protein’s native structure -- its natural working state. The Foldit team Void Crushers correctly
found a near-native model of the protease but also improved it with some
structural modifications. The models discovered allowed researchers to
determine the crystal structure of the protein. Now that science know the
structure, the new model makes finding potential cures to retroviral diseases
like AIDS a possibility.
The Planet Hunters game is a
collaboration between Yale and Zooniverse, a developer of amateur-based science
projects. Plant Hunters allows players to sift through data collected by the
Kepler space telescope, monitoring shifts in brightness of stars. When dips in light occur, a planet is
passing between the star and our field of vision.
Planet Hunters involved 40,000
players poring over data from the Kepler space telescope. Users viewed light curves, indicated
whether it was “variable” or “quiet”, and marked interesting features. Planet
Hunters also allowed users to discuss the data with other citizen scientists in
a forum, where similar curves were grouped in discussion threads. After 4
million games, 69 planet candidates were identified. Two of the planet
candidates were described in a paper in the September Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Planet
Hunters involved in their discovery were identified as coauthors of the paper.
Despite the computational power
available today, both papers used crowd sourcing as a tool, citing the ability
of humans to detect patterns more intuitively than a computer program. In the
future, games like this could make research more accessible to people who may
not have a background in a particular topic. If you want to do science from
your laptop, you can download the Foldit at fold.it/portal/ or play Planet Hunters
at www.planethunters.org. So keep in
mind – you don’t have to be a Ph.D to advance scientific knowledge, you may
just have to play some video games.
Fischer, et
al. “Planet Hunters: The First Two Planet Candidates Identified by the Public
using the Kepler Public Archive Data”, RAS,
MNAS. September 26th, 2011
Khatib, et
al. “Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein
folding game players”, Nature Structural
and Molecular Biology. September 19th, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment