CENTER FOR GAME SCIENCE, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIV. OF WASHINGTON
A small group of diverse individuals living on at least three continents, who call themselves The Contenders, have solved the structure of a protein that has stumped scientists for more than 10 years. And they did so from the comfort of their own homes, playing on online protein folding game called Foldit.
The Contenders’ solution and its validation were published today (September 18) in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
“This is the real deal,” said biophysicist Rhiju Das of Stanford University, who was not involved in the work. “I think this paper really shows how this is a new way of doing science that is more powerful than what a handful of experts could do.”
The protein in question was a retroviral protease of the ...
