Gamers Saving Lives

Reported October 2008

SEATTLE, WA. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- What if instead of waging war or dropping blocks, gamers set their sights on something like a new HIV vaccine? Sounds strange, but biochemistry might be the new must-play video game.

It looks and sounds like a computer game, but Foldit is much more than just a computer game -- it’s crucial biochemistry research.

Biochemist David Baker wants to discover the unique folding of proteins to better understand how they make our bodies work. A friend suggested turning this scientific puzzle into a game. That’s where computer scientist Zoran Popovic and his team come in.

"You no longer need to get a degree in biochemistry to actually start doing this stuff," Zoran Popovic, Ph.D., an associate professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, told Ivanhoe.

The game's introductory levels "trick" you into learning all the concepts you need to know. Then all you do is play -- alone or in teams.

"I know that some of our users have kind of described it as Tetris on steroids or something," Dr. Popovic said.

The goal is to get the highest score by folding the proteins based on the same criteria they use in the lab. Each protein is a puzzle -- the more people play, the better chance a correct “fold” will be discovered for each protein. Eventually the puzzles could be used to help make vaccines and even cure genetic diseases.

"You can get into work and say I stayed up all night -- [but] I wasn’t playing Halo," David Baker, Ph.D., a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told Ivanhoe. "I was designing an HIV vaccine.”

The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Zoran Popovic
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-4226
zoran@cs.washington.edu

David Baker
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-1295
dabaker@u.washington.edu

American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists
Tom Huddleston
Communications Specialist
(703) 248-4744

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