Gamers could win a Nobel high score

 

Years of gaming could be a win for medical science.

A computer game developed by two doctoral students has turned a medical process into a competitive online game. Gamers are now invited turn their collective brainpower for the pursuit of the high score to a game of turning proteins instead.

Doctoral students Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington (UW), aim to change the way science is done and who it is done by.

"Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize," said colleague Zoran Popovic, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering

Foldit, which looks like a 21st-century version of Tetris with multicoloured geometric snakes filling the screen, has introductory levels that teach the rules. The principles of the game are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes – key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people should feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science.

The free program is at http://fold.it/.

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