The protein folding game Foldit has been around for a few years, and has demonstrated the ability of gamers to solve complex protein foldings. However, until recently these were mainly proofs of principle showing the ability to solve foldings to which the solution was already known. A report by an international team of researchers from the U.S., Poland, and Czech Republic in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology now tells the story of Foldit being used for a real-world scientific problem for the first time: they have unraveled the crystal structure of Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (M-PMV) retroviral protease.
Retroviral proteases have critical roles in viral maturation and proliferation and they are very important for antiretroviral drug development for diseases such as AIDS. Researchers have for over a decade been unable to solve the structure despite using many different methods. Even recently, the protein-folding distributed computer program Rosetta@home that uses thousands of home computers’ idle time to compute protein structures, was not able to give an answer. The Foldit players using human intuition and three-dimensional pattern-matching skills, however, were able to solve the problem within days.
The Contenders team, a dozen people from all over the world working together through the program and its chat function, came up with the best solution in a mesmerizing 10 days. Victory was appropriately celebrated by bringing out a champagne toast shared over Skype. As far as we know, this is the first time such a game-like program has been put to actual scientific use, but we are hoping for many more similar stories to come.
Here’s a little video report from MSNBC:
Article in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players…
Additional coverage: cosmic Log…
Flashbacks: Rosetta@home; Rosetta@home Delivers Results; Solve Puzzles for Science: Fold It!; Games for Health 2010: 2 Years of Competitively Folding Proteins with ‘foldit’
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