Playing the Science Game

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By MARIA JOSÉ VIÑAS

Could the person who finds the cure for cancer be a gamer? The creators of an online game that allows players to help scientists design new proteins with therapeutic properties hope so.

A protein has an elaborate, three-dimensional structure, and scientists who want to design new proteins from scratch face extremely complicated puzzles with only one correct answer. David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, uses a computer algorithm based on trial and error to find new proteins' structures. The program requires enormous computer power, so Mr. Baker invented a screen saver that uses the combined spare energy of multiple computers, or "distributed computing," to endlessly fold proteins. When some users of the program told Mr. Baker they wanted to help design proteins, he created Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/adobe_main), a game that would allow them to do that.

"Computers try all possible positions randomly until something falls into place, like monkeys banging typewriters until they write all of Shakespeare's works," says Zoran Popovi´c, a computer scientist at the university who helped Mr. Baker create Foldit.

To engage players in a game that has nothing to do with racing cars or killing zombies, the team made it a competition between players and offered them the chance to share scientific glory: Gamers who come up with winning structures will be named in research papers. And Mr. Popovi´c says Foldit will let computers learn from the folding techniques of the most talented players and become more efficient in searching for new proteins.

More than 40,000 people have downloaded the game. It is still being tested and limits players to finding answers only to known protein puzzles, so that scientists can analyze how good people are at folding proteins. In a few months, the game will allow players to create brand-new proteins. But since the "right" solutions to those puzzles will be unknown, even stable-looking structures proposed by the gamers will have to be created in the lab to see if they really work.

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