When the gamers beat the scientists... in science

The best players were able to develop an intuition about the game and the way the chains would fold. In this way, huge amounts of unnecessary calculations were saved that the computer would have had to perform, on folds that a human player would immediately understand did not lead to a sustainable result.

Passionate and talented computer gamers, also known by the popular nickname 'gamers', have managed to decipher how an important part of a virus is built, which has managed to fool scientists for over a decade. The players succeeded in the task by playing in Foldit, an online game that allows players to cooperate and compete in analyzing and predicting the structure of different proteins.

In the most advanced stage of the game, the gamers were asked to use the rules of the simulation to decipher the structure of a particularly complex protein, present in a virus similar to the HIV virus that causes AIDS. The structure of this protein remained a mystery to researchers in the field for more than ten years. This is especially frustrating because understanding the structure of the protein can lead to the development of drugs that may also be useful in the fight against the AIDS epidemic. The game's inventors presented the aforementioned protein chain to the players and asked them to find how it folds into a final shape.

The gamers managed to solve the problem in just three weeks.

Scientists all over the world are struggling to decipher the structures of proteins, which are made up of hundreds or even thousands of subunits, similar to Lego blocks connected to each other in a chain. The chain can be folded back on itself, wrapped and curled and rolled into a XNUMXD shape, similar to the way human hair can curl and take on a XNUMXD curled shape. It is very difficult to know in advance how a protein chain will fold into a XNUMXD protein, and what its final shape will be.

This is a particularly critical issue for medical science, because proteins play an important role in the life of human cells, bacteria and viruses. The proteins of the HIV virus help it take over the functions of the cell. Other proteins in bacteria help them in their ability to move, in their metabolism and in almost every other aspect of their lives. If we know exactly what each protein looks like, then we will be able to design unique drugs that can attach to that specific protein and paralyze it.

To help solve the problem, protein researcher Prof. David Baker and Prof. Zoran Popovic developed a game called Foldit. The players are shown a protein chain on the screen, and they must fold it into a finished protein while adhering to certain basic biochemical rules, which are easy to learn and understand. They spread the game online, encouraging participants to play it for free, and compete with each other in protein folding.

In the first stages of the game, the players acquired the basic tools for understanding the way proteins fold. They folded simple chains according to the rules of the game, and slowly moved to more complex and complicated chains. In these stages, the double advantage of humans over the computer was revealed: a developed three-dimensional perception, and a good intuition. As of today, it is still difficult for computers to achieve a good XNUMXD perception, while the human brain has undergone an evolution of hundreds of millions of years that specially adapted it to receiving a message from the eyes and processing it into a XNUMXD form.

Beyond that, the best players were able to develop an intuition about the game and the way the chains would fold. In this way, huge amounts of unnecessary calculations were saved that the computer would have had to perform, on folds that a human player would immediately understand did not lead to a sustainable result.

As happens with every new discovery, there are also in this case short- and long-term consequences. In the short term, the structure of a protein has been discovered that may provide important clues regarding the way to fight the HIV virus. The results were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature - structural and molecular biology - with the research signed by both the researchers and the gamers.

In the long run, an important proof has been obtained regarding the way in which ordinary players - who may be children of seven or elderly people of seventy - can contribute the computational power of their minds to the benefit of science. Not for money or favors, but for the enjoyment of the game, and perhaps also for the fame they will gain if they succeed in deciphering the secrets of a particularly important protein. Although this method is not expected to become widespread, it will most likely in the coming years allow scientists to 'exploit' the public to produce important scientific insights - which may also yield life-saving drugs.

"Science is an imaginative adventure," said chemist and Nobel laureate Cyril Hinshelwood. He was joined by Claude Bernard, a French doctor, who added that, "The pleasure of discovery is surely the most joyful that the human mind can ever feel."

Now, the adventure and the pleasure of making discoveries is open to everyone.