Gamers Succeed Where Scientists Fail

O

Orleander

OH JOY!!!!
Valued Senior Member
Gamers Solve AIDS Puzzle

YES! In only 3 weeks?! I wonder how much money this saved. I hope this opens the door on solving other medical/scientific problems

..Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem...

link
 
Gamers Succeed Where Scientists Fail: Molecular Structure of Retrovirus Enzyme Solved, Doors Open to New AIDS Drug Design

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2011) — Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, an online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.htm
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I feel this sets a problematic precedent for parents telling their kids to stop wasting time playing computer games! :eek:
 
I couldn't see where it said how many gamers were involved, but the whole monkeys and typewriters thing springs to mind.
It surely just comes down to having extra resources for processing power once the initial setup is created.
 
Moderator note: 2 threads on same topic merged, with permanent redirects in Computer Science and Biology.
 
If only they could make a game that cures cancer by grinding to level 50 in world of warcraft. Utopia.

Nerd time is a magical thing I guess.
 
Anti-Flag said:
I couldn't see where it said how many gamers were involved, but the whole monkeys and typewriters thing springs to mind.
It surely just comes down to having extra resources for processing power once the initial setup is created.
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I see what you mean but I suppose it boils down to what type of resource you utilise. For me the most significant and interesting aspect of this story is that brute force computer algorithm analysis cannot necessarily do better than human ‘intuition’. I know little, if anything, about bioinformatics but this would seem to me to be an important consideration when tackling a modelling problem.


Orleander said:
Ha herc! Beat ya to it. neener neener
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Yes Orleander, but whose thread has been subsumed into whose? :p
 
I think science lost their imagination and while not all problems need a lot of imagination to solve, it can't hurt as this has proved.
 
Does anyone else imagine those scientists saying this right before the idea struck them, "If only we had a million monkeys and a million typrewriters...Hey! Wait a minute!"
 
Hercules Rockefeller said:
I see what you mean but I suppose it boils down to what type of resource you utilise. For me the most significant and interesting aspect of this story is that brute force computer algorithm analysis cannot necessarily do better than human ‘intuition’. I know little, if anything, about bioinformatics but this would seem to me to be an important consideration when tackling a modelling problem.
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Probably depends on the complexity of the problem and the solution involved. Obviously the more complex the issue the more complex programming the AI would be, and more room for error. It's possibly not intuition, but relation to experiences upon which the computer is lacking. Can a few hundred* experienced and well developed problem solving brains process more than a PC - seems possible!

*Arbitrary figure for example. Actually it was probably more than a few hundred as I seem to recall this being an open source platform available for anyone to try, so possibly thousands of people at any one time.
 
On Line Gamers Solve HIV Protease Puzzle in 10 days

stargate-universe-20100401004337059.jpg


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Fans of the late StarGate Universe certainly remember the scene in which Eli solved the mathematical puzzle necessary to unlock the stargate when he thought he was just playing a video game. Well, reality has now caught up with the SciFi channel.

Foldit.jpg

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Scientists have been trying to figure out the structure of Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (M-PMV) retroviral protease for over a decade. Stumped, they turned to online video gamers playing a game called Foldit. In just 10 days, the gamers solved the puzzle and came up with an almost perfect model.
Scientists were stumped.

For more than a decade, biochemists could not fully decipher the structure of a key protein, called a protease, that retroviruses such as HIV need to multiply. Knowing it would be a key step toward developing better anti-viral drugs.

So University of Washington scientists unleashed an avid group of online gamers. Within three furious weeks of play, pitting teams of non-scientists against each other, the gamers delivered the first accurate model of a retroviral protease.

"It's the power of citizen science," says Firas Khatib, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of UW biochemistry professor David Baker. The UW Center for Game Science and Baker's laboratory developed the game, called Foldit, about three years ago, believing that they could tap some of the brain power that puzzle-loving humans pour into computer games.

There are many examples of crowdsourcing in science, but most involve citizens helping out with drudgery, such as submitting data on animal sightings or running distributed computing programs on a home computer. Foldit players are providing answers beyond the capabilities of experts in the field.

Solving protein structures remains one of the most difficult problems in science. Proteins take shape from a strand of building blocks, called amino acids. Genes tell a cell's protein-making machinery the order for assembling the building blocks in an orderly long strand. When a complex protein, such as an HIV protease, comes off the assembly line, it coils and folds to form an intricate molecular machine. Imagine, say, a sewing machine self-assembling from hundreds of parts arrayed on a string.

Because of the vast number of possible moves during protein folding, even the most advanced super computers still can't reliably predict the structure of large proteins. Foldit players use their intuition and three-dimensional problem-solving skills to figure out likely protein structures. Teams earn points by finding the most chemically stable shapes.

"Competitive social interaction is a very strong driving force," Baker says.

For the retrovirus problem, Foldit players started with scientists' rough-draft idea of the shape of the protease from a retrovirus that causes AIDS in monkeys. During three-weeks of play, gamers generated over one million structure predictions. The solution, reached by the winning team in 10 days, was nearly perfect; it gave Baker and colleagues all the information they needed to nail down the structure almost to the last atom. The journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology published the finding Sunday.

Human minds have an advantage, Khatib says, because of their intuitive ability to see the potential for a delayed payoff from moves that seem like backward steps.

"Human players can see that you may have to go down this road, not doing well for a long time, but those steps are necessary if you want to get to a more correct solution," he says. "Even the best computers and computer algorithms aren't very good at that."
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http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/09/online_gamers_enlisted_by_univ.html
 
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