Gamers crack molecular puzzle

[Zor]

Link
A rather cool little development.

Zor

[Broomstick]

Ah, more proof that games and play aren't a complete waste of time. Very intriguing idea, letting gamers solve puzzles that have real world applications. I'd like to see more of this in the future.

[StarSword]

Yep. Gamers are smarter than a lot of people give us credit for.

As an aside, didn't they do something like that that on the pilot for Stargate: Universe?

[madd0ct0r]

Because words are free.

The monkey-virus puzzle was one of several unsolved molecular mysteries that a colleague of Khatib's at the university, Frank DiMaio, recently tried to solve using a method that took advantage of a protein-folding computer program called Rosetta. "This was one of the cases where his method wasn't able to solve it," Khatib said.

Fortunately, the challenge fit the current capabilities of the Foldit game, so Khatib and his colleagues put the puzzle out there for Foldit's teams to work on. "This was really kind of a last-ditch effort," he recalled. "Can the Foldit players really solve it?"

They could. "They actually did it in less than 10 days," Khatib said.

It was a tag team of 12-15 people spread around the world that built up the final solution.
Each playing solo, but swapping builds and ideas between the team.

Fecking snazzy.

[eion]

We actually had FoldIt homework in Human Biology class. It was quite rewarding hearing all those little bubbles pop and listen to that snazzy music as the protein condensed.

[SpaceMarine93]

Hah, now I feel proud to be a gamer!

[Stark]

You're proud because something you didn't know about was done by people you have no connection to whatever?

Oh, right. Tribalism!

[NoXion]

You're proud because something you didn't know about was done by people you have no connection to whatever?

Oh, right. Tribalism!

I'm sure you've never committed that horrific sin, being the human embodiment of Reason and all.

[madd0ct0r]

as long as space marine has downloaded foldit and is fiddling about, it's all good.

[Feil]

Reality:
Good news! Dedicated team of highly trained experts works tirelessly for years establishing the crucial theoretical framework to solve a difficult scientific problem. After coming across difficulty in the final stages of computer modeling the solution, they try a brilliant, innovative approach, outsourcing the small part of the problem-solving that neither they nor their computers are equipped to accomplish to a large number of volunteers. Their experimental design is so successful that it generates results in less than two weeks.

Science journalism:
OLOLOLOL Gamers solve a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years!!!!!

God-damned incessant populist dreck.

[Zixinus]

Do I get the impression right that what essentially happened was very clever outsourcing of a mental task that would have taken the scientists forever (and was so complex that they can't have supercomputers do it)?

I am reminded of certain XKCD and SMBC comics.

[Gil Hamilton]

Keep in mind what happened here. The players mostly poked the protein bit by bit until they twisted it just right after enough iterations to hit what a program decided was the lowest energy conformer. This, incidentally, is exactly was a protein molecular dynamics simulation does, though instead of an expensive calculation, it was outsourced to a bunch of people who largely acted as parallel processors doing what computers normally do. So this wasn't some great triumph of gamers who showed up the poor stumped scientists, it was more of an extremely low tech version of the Matrix.