

Gamers solve problem in AIDS research that puzzled scientists for years (2011) - sparktherapy
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/09/18/computer-gamers-solve-problem-in-aids-research-that-puzzled-scientists-for-years/

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cfontes
Read the update at the bottom of the page, it has a very important
observation.

"Update: Stephen Curry, who works on protein structures, had this to say about
the paper: “Credit where it’s due: this is certainly an innovative approach to
the problem of determining crystal structures of proteins. And I do like the
idea of ‘citizen science’. Although it’s probably questionable how much
science the gamers are understanding, the involvement in this sort of
research, even if it is just at the level of playing a game, is undoubtedly a
good thing.”

Curry also points out that a structure for this protein was published in 2003
using a different method called nuclear magnetic resonance. Khatib says that
this is “quite inaccurate” and that people have struggled to use it to
progress any further, but Curry says that they don’t say much about the
differences between the old and new structures.

Likewise, Khatib doesn’t mention how closely related the M-PMV protease and
the HIV ones are. “This information is crucial for deciding whether a
structure of M-PMV protease is going to be any use as a template for the
design of novel classes of drug targeted to HIV protease. If I had reviewed
this paper, I would have asked for that information to be included because it
is needed to make sense of observed differences in structure,” he says."

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karlhwhite
Definitely an important observation, but I am very intrigued as to how this
will progress in the future. If the level of accuracy can be determined by
gamification of known protein structures, then I would love to see some
metrics.

I would certainly love to see a world where complex problems are solved with
the aid of the collective pursuit of very skilled and bright laymen/gamers.
There are a lot of very clever and talented people in the world who, due to
varying circumstances, are not in a position to put their problem-solving
savvy to good use.

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joveian
I played with fold.it a bit and my sense is that the implication of this
article that random gamers are solving the problems isn't really correct; it
seemed like most of the highest scoring individuals were either students or
professionals in related fields. The game itself is not at all self-
explanatory and it is not even always possible to follow what you are supposed
to do without a solid background or quite a bit of study outside the game.

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Osiris
Wasn't something like this the premise for a character in Stargate Universe?
The math wizz kid gets recruited because he solves a puzzle in a game they
thought was impossible.

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Wingman4l7
That was likely an homage to the 1984 film _The Last Starfighter_ \-- a
teenager gets recruited "by an alien defense force to fight in an interstellar
war" via being the top scorer on an arcade game.

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gafdlo
This made me think of Dragon Ball's Spirit Bomb somehow

