• Popular
    • Medicine
    • Radiology
    • Cardiology
    • Surgery
    • Nanomedicine
    • Military Medicine
    • Rehab
  • Categories
    • Exclusive
    • A-D
      • Anesthesiology
      • Art
      • Cardiac Surgery
      • Cardiology
      • Critical Care
      • Dentistry
      • Dermatology
      • Diagnostics
    • E-I
      • Emergency Medicine
      • ENT
      • Genetics
      • Geriatrics
      • GI
      • Informatics
    • M-N
      • Medicine
      • Military Medicine
      • Nanomedicine
      • Net News
      • Neurology
      • Neurosurgery
      • Nuclear Medicine
    • O-P
      • Ob/Gyn
      • Oncology
      • Ophthalmology
      • Orthopedic Surgery
      • Pathology
      • Pediatrics
      • Plastic Surgery
      • Psychiatry
      • Public Health
    • R-V
      • Radiation Oncology
      • Radiology
      • Rehab
      • Reproductive Medicine
      • Space Medicine
      • Sports Medicine
      • Surgery
      • Thoracic Surgery
      • Urology
      • Vascular Surgery
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • Submit PR
  • About
  • Follow
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Linkedin
    • Youtube
    • Instagram
    • RSS
  • Submit PR
  • Log in
Medgadget
Medgadget
  • Popular
    • Medicine
      iLet Bionic Pancreas Cleared by FDA

      iLet Bionic Pancreas Cleared by FDA

      Urine Test for Parkinson’s Disease

      Urine Test for Parkinson’s Disease

      Investigating Bacterial Motion for New Treatment Strategies

      Investigating Bacterial Motion for New Treatment Strategies

      Smart Sutures Sense Inflammation, Deliver Drugs, Cells

      Smart Sutures Sense Inflammation, Deliver Drugs, Cells

    • Radiology
      Wearable Ultrasound for Deep Tissue Monitoring

      Wearable Ultrasound for Deep Tissue Monitoring

      Implanted Ultrasound Lets Chemo Access Brain

      Implanted Ultrasound Lets Chemo Access Brain

      Wearable Ultrasound Measures Tissue Stiffness Under Skin

      Wearable Ultrasound Measures Tissue Stiffness Under Skin

      Brain Decoder Spells Out Thoughts

      Brain Decoder Spells Out Thoughts

    • Cardiology
      Wearable Ultrasound for Deep Tissue Monitoring

      Wearable Ultrasound for Deep Tissue Monitoring

      Pencil-on-Paper Wearable Sensor

      Pencil-on-Paper Wearable Sensor

      Cell Culture Chamber Mimics Mechanical States of Disease

      Cell Culture Chamber Mimics Mechanical States of Disease

      Chest Wearable Provides Key Heart Measurements

      Chest Wearable Provides Key Heart Measurements

    • Surgery
      Device Moves Esophagus for Cardiac Ablation Procedure

      Device Moves Esophagus for Cardiac Ablation Procedure

      Smart Sutures Sense Inflammation, Deliver Drugs, Cells

      Smart Sutures Sense Inflammation, Deliver Drugs, Cells

      Automated Computer Assistant for Kidney Transplant Rejection Diagnostics: Interview with Study Authors

      Automated Computer Assistant for Kidney Transplant Rejection Diagnostics: Interview with Study Authors

      Soft Robotic Electrode Enables Minimally Invasive Placement

      Soft Robotic Electrode Enables Minimally Invasive Placement

    • Nanomedicine
      Bottlebrush Nanoparticles Deliver Immunostimulatory Drugs

      Bottlebrush Nanoparticles Deliver Immunostimulatory Drugs

      Nanoparticles Deliver mRNA Therapy to the Lungs

      Nanoparticles Deliver mRNA Therapy to the Lungs

      Nanoparticles Get Lymphatic Vessels Pumping

      Nanoparticles Get Lymphatic Vessels Pumping

      Bottlebrush Particle for Synergistic Drug Combinations

      Bottlebrush Particle for Synergistic Drug Combinations

    • Military Medicine
      Wearable Can Take Multiple Sweat Samples

      Wearable Can Take Multiple Sweat Samples

      Wound Dressing Detects Infection, Changes Color

      Wound Dressing Detects Infection, Changes Color

      Device Measures Hemoglobin More Accurately in Dark Skin

      Device Measures Hemoglobin More Accurately in Dark Skin

      Fingertip Sensor Measures Lithium Levels in Sweat

      Fingertip Sensor Measures Lithium Levels in Sweat

    • Rehab
      Temperature Feedback for Prosthetic Limbs

      Temperature Feedback for Prosthetic Limbs

      Brain Decoder Spells Out Thoughts

      Brain Decoder Spells Out Thoughts

      Knitted Glove Massages the Hand to Treat Edema

      Knitted Glove Massages the Hand to Treat Edema

      Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, CEO at Kandu Health

      Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, CEO at Kandu Health

  • Categories
    • Exclusive
    • A-D
      • Anesthesiology
      • Art
      • Cardiac Surgery
      • Cardiology
      • Critical Care
      • Dentistry
      • Dermatology
      • Diagnostics
    • E-I
      • Emergency Medicine
      • ENT
      • Genetics
      • Geriatrics
      • GI
      • Informatics
    • M-N
      • Medicine
      • Military Medicine
      • Nanomedicine
      • Net News
      • Neurology
      • Neurosurgery
      • Nuclear Medicine
    • O-P
      • Ob/Gyn
      • Oncology
      • Ophthalmology
      • Orthopedic Surgery
      • Pathology
      • Pediatrics
      • Plastic Surgery
      • Psychiatry
      • Public Health
    • R-V
      • Radiation Oncology
      • Radiology
      • Rehab
      • Reproductive Medicine
      • Space Medicine
      • Sports Medicine
      • Surgery
      • Thoracic Surgery
      • Urology
      • Vascular Surgery
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • Submit PR
  • About
  • Log in
  • Submit PR
  • Follow
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Linkedin
    • Youtube
    • Instagram
    • RSS

Solve Puzzles for Science: Fold It!

May 9th, 2008 Medgadget Editors Net News


This new online game, a protein folding puzzler, is a product of a collaboration between scientists at University of Washington and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The game is designed to entertain and advance science at the same time. In other words, this is a distributed computing project with built-in fun.

…Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers at the University of Washington are bringing the arcane world of protein folding to the online gaming arena with the launch of “Foldit,” a free game in which players around the world compete to design proteins. The real world benefit: Scientists will test proteins designed by the game’s players to see if they make viable candidate compounds for new drugs.
Users can access the game via the web at www.fold.it
The development of the online game is a natural extension of HHMI investigator David Baker’s quest to understand how proteins – the building blocks of cells — fold into unique three-dimensional shapes. Over the past decade, Baker and his colleagues have made steady progress in developing computer algorithms to predict how a linear string of amino acids will fold into a given protein’s characteristic shape. A detailed understanding of a protein’s structure can offer scientists a wealth of information — revealing intricacies about the protein’s biological function and suggesting new ideas for drug design.

Predicting the shapes that natural proteins will take is one of the preeminent challenges in biology, and modeling even a small protein requires making trillions of calculations. Over the last three years, volunteers around the globe — now numbering about 200,000— have donated their computer down-time to performing those calculations in a distributed network called Rosetta@home. The computing logic behind the network is an algorithm called Rosetta that uses the Monte Carlo technique to find the best “fit” for all of the parts of a given protein.
But as the Rosetta volunteers watched their computers blindly trying to work out a solution by methodically testing every possible combination and shape to find the best fit, they began to think that a little human intervention might speed things up. “People were writing in, saying, ‘Hey! The computer is doing silly things! It would be great if we could help guide it,’” remembers Baker, who is based at the University of Washington (UW) where he developed the Rosetta algorithm and network.
Baker didn’t know how he could make that happen until about 18 months ago, when he went hiking on Mt. Rainier with his neighbor David Salesin, a University of Washington computer scientist who also runs a research laboratory at nearby Adobe Systems. Baker and Salesin began discussing ways to make Rosetta more interactive. With the inherent fun of competition, Salesin thought a multiplayer online game was the way to go. By the time they got back to the car, they had settled on that idea. Salesin provided Baker with the names of three colleagues, led by UW computer scientist Zoran Popovic, who could help Baker create the game.
Over the next few months, doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, working with Popovic and Baker, created the program, and team tested it in small venues. One match between teams from the University of California and the University of Illinois aroused unexpected fervor and cheering among spectators. “30 or 40 people participated,” says Baker. “The competition was very intense.”
“Foldit” takes players through a series of practice levels designed to teach the basics of protein folding, before turning them loose on real proteins from nature. “Our main goal was to make sure that anyone could do it, even if they didn’t know what biochemistry or protein folding was,” says Popovic. At the moment, the game only uses proteins whose three-dimensional structures have been solved by researchers. But, says Popovic, “soon we’ll be introducing puzzles for which we don’t know the solution.”

Solve Puzzles for Science: Fold It!
HHMI press release: Researchers Launch Online Protein Folding Game…; UW press release: Game’s high score could earn the Nobel…

Medgadget Editors

Medical technologies transform the world! Join us and see the progress in real time. At Medgadget, we report the latest technology news, interview leaders in the field, and file dispatches from medical events around the world since 2004.

Sponsored

Packaging Compliance Labs (PCL) Celebrates Site Expansion in Grand Rapids, MI

Novel Approach to Assessing Lung Function Enables Improved Detection, Diagnosis and Treatment Decisions in Subject Exposed to Military Burn Pits

U.S. Patent Office Grants Additional Patent Protection For  Exoskeleton Focal-Force Angioplasty Platform

U.S. Patent Office Grants Additional Patent Protection For Exoskeleton Focal-Force Angioplasty Platform

Reliefband® State of Nausea Study Reveals More Than Three-Quarters of Americans Are Prevented from Enjoying Life As a Result of Regular Nausea

Reliefband® State of Nausea Study Reveals More Than Three-Quarters of Americans Are Prevented from Enjoying Life As a Result of Regular Nausea

New AI-Powered Voice Controls Streamline Ultrasound Imaging with All Clarius Handheld Systems

New AI-Powered Voice Controls Streamline Ultrasound Imaging with All Clarius Handheld Systems

interviews & reviews
Automated Computer Assistant for Kidney Transplant Rejection Diagnostics: Interview with Study Authors

Automated Computer Assistant for Kidney Transplant Rejection Diagnostics: Interview with Study Authors

RF Technology for Health Monitoring: Michael Leabman, CTO of Movano Health

RF Technology for Health Monitoring: Michael Leabman, CTO of Movano Health

AI’s role in Healthcare: Exclusive Interview with Catherine Estrampes, President & CEO at GE Healthcare

AI’s role in Healthcare: Exclusive Interview with Catherine Estrampes, President & CEO at GE Healthcare

Digital Self-Neuromodulation Therapy for PTSD: Interview with Oded Kraft, CEO of GrayMatters Health

Digital Self-Neuromodulation Therapy for PTSD: Interview with Oded Kraft, CEO of GrayMatters Health

Levels Is Making Metabolism and Blood Glucose Tracking Accessible To Everyone

Levels Is Making Metabolism and Blood Glucose Tracking Accessible To Everyone

Imagene Profiles Cancer Biomarkers in Real Time

Imagene Profiles Cancer Biomarkers in Real Time

Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, CEO at Kandu Health

Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, CEO at Kandu Health

  • Subscribe
  • Contact us
  • Submit
  • About
  • Back to top
Medgadget

Medical technologies transform the world! Join us and see the progress in real time. At Medgadget, we report the latest technology news, interview leaders in the field, and file dispatches from medical events around the world since 2004.

  • About
  • Editorial policies
  • Contact
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy
  • Submit press release
  • Advertise
© Medgadget, Inc. All rights reserved. | The Medical Revolution Will Be Blogged.
Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content! Thank you!
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Email