Play a Videogame, Cure Sepsis

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Play a Videogame, Cure Sepsis


DARPA wants you to do a solid for science.

DARPA, better known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, needs your help. It's trying to find a cure for the deadly blood infection sepsis, and it's hoping to crowdsource the effort through Foldit, a puzzle game currently in beta that challenges players to "fold" proteins in order to predict their structures and design new ones.

The name and the nature of the game are more than a little reminiscent of the distributed computing project Folding@home [http://folding.stanford.edu/English/HomePage], but the hope (aside from saving thousands of lives) is to demonstrate that humans can actually be more effective than computers at "certain aspects of protein structure prediction."

"For protein structure prediction, the eventual goal is to have human folders work on proteins that do not have a known structure. This would require first attracting the attention of scientists and biotech companies and convincing them that the process is effective," the Foldit FAQ [http://fold.it/portal/info/faq] explains. "Another goal is to take folding strategies that human players have come up with while playing the game, and automate these strategies to make protein-prediction software more effective. These two goals are more or less independent and either or both may happen."

The "Sepsis Design Puzzle [http://fold.it/portal/node/993419]" challenges players to design improved versions of the Mannose-Binding Lectin protein, which helps defend the body against invading pathogens. "The goal here is to use Foldit to improve MBL's sugar binding capabilities, allowing for its potential clinical use," the site says. "You will work towards this goal by redesigning specific regions of MBL in order to increase the number and strength of protein-sugar interactions." The most promising designs will be tested at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering to determine whether they actually improve on naturally-occurring MBL.

I've horsed around with Foldit a bit and while it's not likely the most fun you'll ever have in an afternoon, puzzle fans, particularly those with a taste for biotech, might get a kick out of it. And it is a very effective method of research: In 2011, it took Foldit players just three weeks to facilitate a breakthrough discovery about the design of an AIDS-related protein that scientists had been working on without success for more than a decade.

You'll have to make your way through some introductory puzzles before you're given a chance to cure sepsis, however, and with the challenge winding down in just a few days, you might want to get a move on. Get the info, grab the software and put your brain to work for science at fold.it [http://fold.it/portal/node/993229].

Thanks to Antari [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Antari] for the tip.


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Shuguard

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Apr 19, 2012
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I'll probably try this out.

So i'm just going to ask this.
I wonder how long it take before someone comes up with a game with a giant pair of breasts to jiggle for breast cancer donations. Or is that just porn?
 

GAunderrated

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Jul 9, 2012
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I did a speech on gamification and used fold it as a primary example of games that can be beneficial to the medical field. I really hope that more games like this come out in the future.
 

Slythernite

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This seems very interesting. I enjoy "gamifying"(?) science more and more every day. Shame I can't "gamify"(?) psychiatry... Or can I?
 

weirdee

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Slythernite said:
This seems very interesting. I enjoy "gamifying"(?) science more and more every day. Shame I can't "gamify"(?) psychiatry... Or can I?
There was that game that assisted people suffering from alzheimers...forgot where that article was, though.
 

ResonanceSD

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Woohoo! Gamifying Science!


Now why the odd request that I have to wear an orange jumpsuit whilst playing it?
 

brunothepig

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It has been a while since I played Foldit. May jump back in to check this out, hopefully it's still installed on my PC. Oh, and anyone who does like Foldit, or is even interested in it, you may also be interested in [a href=http://eterna.cmu.edu/eterna_page.php?page=me_tab]EteRNA[/a]. It's a similar thing, only with RNA, can be played in your browser so you don't even have to install anything, and the "mechanics", so to speak, are a fair bit simpler than Foldit, so it's easier to pick up. I'd advise you to check it out.
 

1337mokro

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/Grows a goatee
/Puts on nerdy glasses
/Grabs crowbar

We meet once more foldit! Last time you bested me. This time I shall defeat you for great science!!!
 

NightHawk21

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The program is too random for me. Good luck to everyone though, and hopefully the scientists get what they want.
 

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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I went to one of those links, and at the top it said solve puzzles, for science. My god, it's Aperature.
 

elenahay

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Everyone loves earning achievements in games, but what if that achievement was solving a decade-old puzzle that confused AIDS researchers for years? The treatment of HIV and AIDS has been fundamentally the same since 1996. The identical drugs on essentially the same routines are recommended. One of the primary difficulties for researchers has been untangling how the enzymes of the virus work and interact. Using a game called "Foldit [http://www.newsytype.com/11536-aids-protein-foldit/]", players have deciphered the crystal structure of protein that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys. It had confused scientist for several years, but took gamers about 3 weeks to solve. Indeed, it is a remarkable achievement!