Foldit is a game designed to tackle the problem of protein folding. Proteins are small “machines” within our bodies that handle practically all functions of living organisms. By knowing more about the 3D structure of proteins (or how they “fold”), we can better understand their function, and we can also get a better idea of how to combat diseases, create vaccines, and even find novel biofuels.
It turns out that protein folding happens to be a very hard problem. Although laboratory processes to determine the protein shape exist, they are expensive and very slow. For this reason, there has been a considerable research focus to predict the structure of these proteins computationally, primarily through large-scale distributed computing. Unfortunately these distributed computing projects have shown promising but limited success. Seth Cooper, Adrien Treuille together with their advisor Zoran Popović developed a game that augments the computational search for protein folds with large-scale human spatial reasoning ability. The state-of-the-art biochemistry simulations embedded within the game are created by a team lead by a UW professor David Baker, a world-renown expert in proteomics.
In Foldit, players are presented with a model of a protein, which they can fold by using a host of provided tools. The game evaluates how good of a fold the player has made, and gives them a score. Scores are uploaded to a leaderboard, allowing for competition between players from all around the world. Since its release, Foldit has gained over 460,000 players from all walks of life. In fact, the best Foldit players have little to no prior exposure to biochemistry. These players have helped to push Foldit to the forefront of protein folding capability, showing that for a particularly hard proteins, Foldit produced predictions outperform the best known computational methods. These results were reported in Nature journal, marking the first time the leading scientific journal has published a paper with over 57,000 authors, vast majority of whom have no background in biochemistry. More generally, Foldit showed that it is possible to effectively “crowdsource” human problem solving to solve very hard scientific problems, and that the gaming environment is capable of turning novices into highly skilled researchers. The goal of the Center for Game Science is to generalize and expand the success of Foldit to a wider range of problems in science, education and beyond.
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Foldit Players Credited
Christopher B Eiben, Justin B Siegel, Jacob B Bale, Seth Cooper, Firas Khatib, Betty W Shen, Foldit Players, Barry L Stoddard, Zoran Popović, David Baker (2012). Increased Diels-Alderase activity through backbone remodeling guided by Foldit players. Nature Biotechnology, 2012. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Firas Khatib, Seth Cooper, Michael D. Tyka, Kefan Xu, Ilya Makedon, David Baker, Foldit players (2011). Algorithm discovery by protein folding game players. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 108 no. 47 18949-18953, 2011. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Firas Khatib, Frank DiMaio, Foldit Contenders Group, Foldit Void Crushers Group, Seth Cooper, Maciej Kazmierczyk, Miroslaw Gilski, Szymon Krzywda, Helena Zabranska, Iva Pichova, James Thompson, Mariusz Jaskolski, David Baker (2011). Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players. Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 18, 1175-1177, 2011. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Seth Cooper, Firas Khatib, Ilya Makedon, Hao Lu, Janos Barbero, David Baker, James Fogarty, Zoran Popović, Foldit players (2011). Analysis of Social Gameplay Macros in the Foldit Cookbook. Foundations of Digital Games, 2011. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Seth Cooper, Firas Khatib, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Jeehyung Lee, Michael Beenen, Andrew Leaver-Fay, David Baker, Zoran Popović, Foldit players (2010). Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game. Nature 446 p. 756-760, 05 August 2010. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Seth Cooper, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Andrew Leaver-Fay, Kathleen Tuite, Firas Khatib, Alex Cho Snyder, Michael Beenen, David Salesin, David Baker, Zoran Popović, >57,000 Foldit players (2010). The challenge of designing scientific discovery games. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 2010. [PDF] [PROJECT]
Miroslaw Gilski, Maciej Kazmierczyk, Szymon Krzywda, Helena Zábranská, Seth Cooper, Zoran Popović, Firas Khatib, Frank DiMaio, James Thompson, David Baker, Iva Pichová, Mariusz Jaskolskia (2011). High-resolution structure of a retroviral protease folded as a monomer. Acta Crystallographica D67, 907-914, 2011. [PDF] [PROJECT]
9/25/13: Foldit receives the Dr. Frank H. Netter Award for Special Contributions to Medical Education.
3/28/13: Foldit receives honorable mention for Technical Excellence at the 15th Annual IGF Awards.
1/31/13: Foldit wins the 2012 Katerva Award.
3/7/12: The Center for Game Science and Foldit make the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.
2/3/12: Foldit wins 1st Prize in the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.
12/01/11: Foldit wins TechFlash Newsmaker award in the “Innovation of the Year” award.
11/07/11: UW team wins the International IGem 2011 grand prize. The team’s project used Foldit to redesign a key enzyme for Celiac disease.
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- Released : May 8, 2008