Help science by playing a video game

As time passes and computer power increases, more and more tasks are performed by machines. A computer’s ability to do huge calculations in no time and also to perform with precision time and time again make them ideal for a number of areas where humans wouldn’t be up to the task. Even though we are clearly surpassed in certain situations, the human mind is still an awesome tool which can perform with amazing results in certain situations

One of these situations has been adapted into a game and is already proving a huge success.

The game is called Foldit and it deals with the internal structure of proteins, some of the most important building blocks of life. The game was developed at the University of Washington (US) and, in it, players try to solve different puzzles that represent how a real protein molecule would behave. By manipulating the structure of these molecules, players earn points for discovering stable configurations. It is available from the Foldit web site for for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Proteins fold into three dimensional structures inside cells but each protein can fold into thousands of different configurations so scientists are trying to anticipate some of these structures in order to better understand the behavior of proteins. Past efforts focused on pure computing power and brute force, where a computer program tried millions of combinations by itself looking for stable configurations, but scientists have realized that the human mind clearly outperforms computers at this task. Abilities like intuition and spatial reasoning allow players to solve many of these configurations with better results than supercomputers.

By harnessing these human abilities, Foldit provides a fun game and passtime that also helps in understanding the fundamental structures of our bodies. Even though there are already over 100,000 users of Foldit, the scientists at the University of Washington are hoping this number increases in the future.

The task at hand is huge but, with the collaboration of more and more people, scientists will get a better understanding on these structures and if you can have a good time while helping them out, that’s a kind of science I think everyone can enjoy.

Read [The Seattle Times Also Read [The NY Times] Site [Foldit]