Online gamers solve enzyme riddle
29 Sep 2011 by Evoluted New Media
Puzzled scientists have turned to online gamers to solve the structure on a retrovirus enzyme, their discovery may lead to new drugs designed to treat AIDS.
Scientists had failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, so called in Foldit players to produce an accurate model of the enzyme, a retroviral protease which has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates.
“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” said Firas Khatib, a biochemist from the University of Washington.
The gamers generated models good enough for the researchers to refine and determine the enzyme’s structure within a few days – some surfaces on the models even stood out as likely targets for drug to deactivate the enzyme. The gamers – who are all listed as co-authors on the paper published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology – were helped by the fact that they were clueless about what the retrovirus protease molecule looked like.
The solution of the virus enzyme structure indicated the power of online computer games to channel human intuition and of three-dimensional pattern-matching skills to solve challenging scientific problems, the scientist said.
Foldit taps into players’ 3D spatial abilities to rotate chains of amino acids in cyberspace. Direct manipulation tools, as well as help from a program called Rosetta, encouraged participants to configure graphics into a workable protein model. Teams send in their answers and researchers constantly improve the game and its puzzles by analysing the gamers’ problem-solving strategies.
“Online gamers have solved a longstanding scientific problem, perhaps leading the way to new anti-viral drugs,” said Carter Kimsey, program director for the National Science Foundation’s division of biological infrastructure, who funded the research.
“After this discovery, young people might not mind doing their online science homework,” he said. “This is an innovative approach to getting humans and computer models to ‘learn from each other’ in real-time.”
Crystal structure of monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players
