Gamers Help Solve HIV Enzyme Structure
by Jake Weston, posted on 20 September 2011 / 1,974 Views
Games have long been the source of scientific study, but rarely has it been the other way around. Recently, however, a recent study published by the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology has revealed that gamers helped scientists determine the structure of of a monomeric protease enzyme, an essential component of various retroviruses, including HIV.
Scientists gathered a group of gamers to compete with each other in Foldit, a game designed by researchers at the University of Washington. The game gives players various tools to unfold virtual models of amino acid chains, which is essential to understanding their structure, as well as the structure of the proteins they construct.
Evidently, the enzyme structure, which scientists have been trying to determine for decades, was determined by gamers after three weeks of playing the game. Where were the game players able to succeed where scientists have failed? According to one researcher Firas Khatib, it was the power of intuition.
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," said Khatib, "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
Hopefully this study will greatly aid researchers in the fight against AIDS and HIV, and here's also hoping that future studies use similar methods to use gaming as a positive force.
