How do you know if the scientific article you have written is brilliant? There are many ways depending on the field you are researching in, but one of the quickest ways is getting your article published in the journal Nature. As an interdisciplinary journals alongside the most cited (With an Impact Factor of 36,101 to boot) journal in science, get a paper in there and you know damn well that it should be cited in no time at all. But lets say…. if research that was primarily assisted by online gamers managed to get a paper in this journal? Interested now? and no… I am not talking about that Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft.
Foldit is an online “game” published by the University of Washington’s Departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry. This may sound completely nerdy to some but it is a game all around Protein Folding, the process in which a protein molecule forms a three dimensional shape such as the image on the left. I won’t go into all the details of the science behind it as it is at least a couple of articles in itself, but this year, a problem that has stumped researchers for the longest of times was solved in just 10 days through this software. The problem was the crystal structure behind the M-PMV retroviral protease of Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, which has a link to AIDS. As this is not a science website and this is not specifically my field of research, you can read more about it HERE or if you want to go even further, read the actual Nature article HERE.
Simply put, this is but one milestone for the software. How many months or years until online gamers, perhaps with only limited scientific knowledge manage to crack some of the big mysteries around proteins, which may lead to new drugs, treatment methodologies or even just improving our knowledge of this field? Who knows…. even this one discovery could lead to an anti-HIV / anti-AIDS drugs or vaccinations, which may make these diseases a thing of the past – much like we have done in the past with Smallpox.
If you are interested in joining the persuit of knowledge or even just trying out a different game then usual, you can check out the programs official website HERE.
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