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Gamers unravel HIV
Topic Started: Sep 20 2011, 05:02 AM (1,119 Views)
Pasta
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How cool is this:

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/on...-161920724.html

Quote:
 
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.

Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

This is where Foldit comes in.

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.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.

"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
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u4coffee
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WOW!
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Rob
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I agree w/ coffee.
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Pasta
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u4coffee,Sep 20 2011
07:29 AM
WOW!

As to my apparent brother in seeking positive technological developments respecting contributions to humanity.....

The nonsense and theatrics and negativism of modern news really masks the good things people do.

Most people are good, and the advances in our knowledge base are incredible.

Screw CNN, Fox, et al. Wouldn't it be good if they looked for stories like this.

To me the world is not on the brink of economic collapse. We are simply on the verge of such dire circumstances that our elected officials must do something positive and reasonable. Democracies in the western context are the only places where this can be made so.

These elected officials never do anything good unless they have no choice. In truth they are probably happy that they have no choice.

Any how, between this and the 3D blood vessels and other good news, however hard we have to look to find it, there will be no depression.

And I will be at the inaugral Texas GP.
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I should add, I was watching an interview with Sir Richard Branson a few days ago about space tourism, exploration, development and using his business model to replace the massive expenditures of NASA or the Russian Space Federation etc.

For a few million dollars, Virgin Galactic has managed to put people into early outer space. Their model makes sense in terms of using the atmosphere as launching fuel, rather than pure solid rocket launchers.

So obvious, and I always wonder why the big boys didn't figure that out.

Instead of ---- what --- hundreds of millions if not more per launch via pure rockets, these guys can put sequential payloads into orbit for only a few million per comparable payload.

Free enterprise and capitalism.

I might point out what we already know - Branson has hardly put a nickel into Virgin Galactic. All the money has been provided by presales, made possible by his reputation.

Human ingenuity will always be superior to institutions. The institutions have bred this notion - probably for self preservation reasons - that it is so expensive to reduce risk. Nonsense.

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