Foldit, a new computer game, allows players to join together and design protein structures. Players can pull together their constituent threads (called side chains), bend the protein's overall structure (called the backbone), and try to generate hydrogen bonds, a stabilizing influence. Currently, sciences use brute-force method computational power to design structures. Researchers have found that the softer human intelligence can quickly identify tweaks in the structure that can vastly improve its effectiveness.
Insight: It's a visual, collaborative world. While many people consume information via text and audio, visualization allows us to quickly process complex data. By creating a game environment, the developers have tapped into the inner competitiveness of us all.
Read more about it in Katherine Bourzac's post in Technology Review.
Download the game here.
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