Inside the Box: Video Gamers with Super Computers Curing Complex Diseases

Innovation is too often confined to incremental development. New apps and new devices satisfy market needs and ring up big sales. But radical and unheralded advances can come from applying existing technologies to solving problems for which they were not designed. That is where disruptive innovation can really be felt.

As in the use of competitive video game concepts to challenging scientific inquiries which are leading to advances in cancer and AIDS research. This approach marries the technological background and gaming chops of young researchers with the need to solve complex biological and chemical riddles that have stymied scientists employing more traditional methods.

The implication is that gamers are constantly trying to solve problems under great pressure in a competitive environment. If one substitutes rogue molecules or viruses for enemy aliens (not so different, come to think of it), creative outcomes can be discovered. There are points, competitors, winners and losers. This makes the notion of thinking inside the box a lot more intriguing. JL

Michael Coren reports in Fast Company:

When video gamers armed with the world's most powerful supercomputers take on science and its most vexing riddles, who wins? Sometimes, it's the gamers.

Humans retain an edge over computers when complex problems require intuition and leaps of insight rather than brute calculation. Savvy programmers and researchers at the University of Washington have tapped into this human "supercomputer" with Foldit, an online game that poses complex puzzles about how proteins fold, one of the hardest and most expensive problems in biology today
"Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins," the company explains on its website. "Since proteins are part of so many diseases, they can also be part of the cure. Players can design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases."

They've been on a tear ever since. With four publications to their name, and a host of puzzles left to solve from deadly diseases to biofuels, Foldit has proven that the concept works.

Their latest solution has resolved a problem stumping scientists for a decade. Publishing in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology on September 18 (the scientists and gamers are co-authors), researchers show how gamers provided the crucial insights to solve the structure of a protein-sniping enzyme critical for reproduction of the AIDS virus. With help from game-players' strategies, researchers revealed the enzymes' structure within three weeks and identified targets for drugs to neutralize it.

Want to discover the next cure? You can sign on to Foldit, and use your 3-D spatial abilities to manipulate amino acid chains starting simple with "One Small Clash," and work your way up to "Rubber Band Reversal." UW researchers are constantly tweaking the game design and analyzing players' strategies to come up with new answers.

Game on.