The University of Washington has finally found a way to make us of the mental energy expended by online gamers – recruiting them to decipher the structure of monomeric enzymes, found in retroviruses like HIV, by playing an online game called Foldit. Researchers had been working on it for the past decade; the collective gamers did it in three weeks.

Granted, this isn’t because gamers are better at science or anything – if anything, the creators of Foldit show a better understanding of both gaming psychology and amino acid structures. First developed 2008 by the University of Washington, the game had players compete in groups to unfold chains of amino acids using in-game tools – coming up with a crowdsourced structure in a little over three weeks.

Apparently, this counts as an important step towards discovering the causes of and treatments for the retroviral diseases related to this enzyme. Since gamers are cheaper and more successful than computer modelling programs, Foldit co-creator Seth Cooper says they’ll be making use of the otherwise untapped talent again in the future.

A nice touch:  The research paper based on the Foldit findings lists players, as well as researchers as co-authors, and says the discovery “provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs.”

[Source: NextWeb]