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here's your chance to win the Nobel prize in medicine (and have fun too)
This article was posted here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/medicine.php
The website for the Foldit game is at:
http://fold.it/portal/adobe_main/
Public release date: 8-May-2008
[ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ]
Contact: Hannah Hickey
hickeyh@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
Computer game's high score could earn the Nobel Prize in medicine
Gamers have devoted countless years of collective brainpower to rescuing
princesses or protecting the planet against alien invasions. This week
researchers at the University of Washington will try to harness those finely
honed skills to make medical discoveries, perhaps even finding a cure for
HIV.
A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport.
Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by
which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes - key for
biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.
After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video
game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The
free program is at http://fold.it/.
The game was developed by doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral
researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering,
working with Zoran Popovic, a UW associate professor of computer science and
engineering; David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator; and David Salesin, a UW professor of
computer science and engineering. Professional game designers provided
advice during the game's creation.
"We're hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it's done
by," said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health
meeting in Baltimore. "Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the
game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize."
Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human
body, form every cell, make up the immune system and set the speed of
chemical reactions. We know many proteins' genetic sequence, but don't know
how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial
biological roles.
Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a
mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take
centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home
that taps into volunteers' computer time all around the world. But even
200,000 volunteers aren't enough.
"There are too many possibilities for the computer to go through every
possible one," Baker said. "An approach like Rosetta@home does well on small
proteins, but as the protein gets bigger and bigger it gets harder and
harder, and the computers often fail.
"People, using their intuition, might be able to home in on the right answer
much more quickly."
Rosetta@home and Foldit both use the Rosetta protein-folding software.
Foldit is the first protein-folding project that asks volunteers for
something other than unused processor cycles on their computers or
Playstation machines. Foldit also differs from recent human-computer
interactive games that use humans' ability to recognize images or interpret
text. Instead, Foldit capitalizes on people's natural 3-D problem-solving
skills.
The intuitive skills that make someone good at playing Foldit are not
necessarily the ones that make a top biologist. Baker says his 13-year-old
son is faster at folding proteins than he is. Others may be even faster.
"I imagine that there's a 12-year-old in Indonesia who can see all this in
their head," Baker says.
Eventually, the researchers hope to advance science by discovering
protein-folding prodigies who have natural abilities to see proteins in 3-D.
"Some people are just able to look at the game and in less than two minutes,
get to the top score," said Popovic. "They can't even explain what they're
doing, but somehow they're able to do it."
The game looks like a 21st-century version of Tetris, with multicolored
geometric snakes filling the screen. A team that includes a half-dozen UW
graduate and undergraduate students spent more than a year figuring out how
to make the game both accurate and engaging. They faced some special
challenges that commercial game developers don't encounter.
"We don't know what the best result is, so we can't help people or hint
people toward that goal," Popovic explained. The team also couldn't
arbitrarily decide to make one move worth 1,000 bonus points, since the
score corresponds to the energy needed to hold the protein in that shape.
Almost 1,000 players have tested the system in recent weeks, playing
informal challenges using proteins with known shapes. Starting this week,
however, the developers will open the game to the public and offer proteins
of unknown shapes. Also starting this week, Foldit gamers will face off
against research groups around the world in a major protein-structure
competition held every two years.
Beginning in the fall, Foldit problems will expand to involve creating new
proteins that we might wish existed - enzymes that could break up toxic
waste, for example, or that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Computers alone cannot design a protein from scratch. The game lets the
computer help out when it's a simple optimization problem - the same way
that computer solitaire sometimes moves the cards to clean up the table -
letting the player concentrate on interesting moves.
Eventually, the researchers hope to present a medical nemesis, such as HIV
or malaria, and challenge players to devise a protein with just the right
shape to lock into the virus and deactivate it. Winning protein designs will
be synthesized in Baker's lab and tested in petri dishes. High-scoring
players will be credited in scientific publications the way that top
Rosetta@home contributors already are credited for their computer time.
"Long-term, I'm hoping that we can get a significant fraction of the world's
population engaged in solving critical problems in world health, and doing
it collaboratively and successfully through the game," Baker said. "We're
trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance
biomedical research."
Foldit includes elements of multiplayer games in which people can team up,
chat with other players and create online profiles. Over time the
researchers will analyze people's moves to see how the top players solve
puzzles. This information will be fed back into the game's design so the
game's tools and format can evolve.
###
The research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., and
through fellowships at Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp.
For more information, contact Baker at (206) 543-1295 or
dabaker@u.washington.edu and Popovic at (206) 543-4226 or
zoran@cs.washington.edu.
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/medicine.php
The website for the Foldit game is at:
http://fold.it/portal/adobe_main/
Public release date: 8-May-2008
[ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ]
Contact: Hannah Hickey
hickeyh@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
Computer game's high score could earn the Nobel Prize in medicine
Gamers have devoted countless years of collective brainpower to rescuing
princesses or protecting the planet against alien invasions. This week
researchers at the University of Washington will try to harness those finely
honed skills to make medical discoveries, perhaps even finding a cure for
HIV.
A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport.
Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by
which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes - key for
biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.
After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video
game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The
free program is at http://fold.it/.
The game was developed by doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral
researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering,
working with Zoran Popovic, a UW associate professor of computer science and
engineering; David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator; and David Salesin, a UW professor of
computer science and engineering. Professional game designers provided
advice during the game's creation.
"We're hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it's done
by," said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health
meeting in Baltimore. "Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the
game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize."
Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human
body, form every cell, make up the immune system and set the speed of
chemical reactions. We know many proteins' genetic sequence, but don't know
how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial
biological roles.
Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a
mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take
centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home
that taps into volunteers' computer time all around the world. But even
200,000 volunteers aren't enough.
"There are too many possibilities for the computer to go through every
possible one," Baker said. "An approach like Rosetta@home does well on small
proteins, but as the protein gets bigger and bigger it gets harder and
harder, and the computers often fail.
"People, using their intuition, might be able to home in on the right answer
much more quickly."
Rosetta@home and Foldit both use the Rosetta protein-folding software.
Foldit is the first protein-folding project that asks volunteers for
something other than unused processor cycles on their computers or
Playstation machines. Foldit also differs from recent human-computer
interactive games that use humans' ability to recognize images or interpret
text. Instead, Foldit capitalizes on people's natural 3-D problem-solving
skills.
The intuitive skills that make someone good at playing Foldit are not
necessarily the ones that make a top biologist. Baker says his 13-year-old
son is faster at folding proteins than he is. Others may be even faster.
"I imagine that there's a 12-year-old in Indonesia who can see all this in
their head," Baker says.
Eventually, the researchers hope to advance science by discovering
protein-folding prodigies who have natural abilities to see proteins in 3-D.
"Some people are just able to look at the game and in less than two minutes,
get to the top score," said Popovic. "They can't even explain what they're
doing, but somehow they're able to do it."
The game looks like a 21st-century version of Tetris, with multicolored
geometric snakes filling the screen. A team that includes a half-dozen UW
graduate and undergraduate students spent more than a year figuring out how
to make the game both accurate and engaging. They faced some special
challenges that commercial game developers don't encounter.
"We don't know what the best result is, so we can't help people or hint
people toward that goal," Popovic explained. The team also couldn't
arbitrarily decide to make one move worth 1,000 bonus points, since the
score corresponds to the energy needed to hold the protein in that shape.
Almost 1,000 players have tested the system in recent weeks, playing
informal challenges using proteins with known shapes. Starting this week,
however, the developers will open the game to the public and offer proteins
of unknown shapes. Also starting this week, Foldit gamers will face off
against research groups around the world in a major protein-structure
competition held every two years.
Beginning in the fall, Foldit problems will expand to involve creating new
proteins that we might wish existed - enzymes that could break up toxic
waste, for example, or that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Computers alone cannot design a protein from scratch. The game lets the
computer help out when it's a simple optimization problem - the same way
that computer solitaire sometimes moves the cards to clean up the table -
letting the player concentrate on interesting moves.
Eventually, the researchers hope to present a medical nemesis, such as HIV
or malaria, and challenge players to devise a protein with just the right
shape to lock into the virus and deactivate it. Winning protein designs will
be synthesized in Baker's lab and tested in petri dishes. High-scoring
players will be credited in scientific publications the way that top
Rosetta@home contributors already are credited for their computer time.
"Long-term, I'm hoping that we can get a significant fraction of the world's
population engaged in solving critical problems in world health, and doing
it collaboratively and successfully through the game," Baker said. "We're
trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance
biomedical research."
Foldit includes elements of multiplayer games in which people can team up,
chat with other players and create online profiles. Over time the
researchers will analyze people's moves to see how the top players solve
puzzles. This information will be fed back into the game's design so the
game's tools and format can evolve.
###
The research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., and
through fellowships at Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp.
For more information, contact Baker at (206) 543-1295 or
dabaker@u.washington.edu and Popovic at (206) 543-4226 or
zoran@cs.washington.edu.
I once won the No Bell prize in Pac-Man at Corky's bar and grill talk
about the fame it brought ...............for three days that was all
the drunks could talk about!!!!!!!!!
about the fame it brought ...............for three days that was all
the drunks could talk about!!!!!!!!!
