Folding@Home 2.0 - An Online Protein Folding Game

a boy named woo writes "Tired of justifying your gaming addiction? Now you can really help accomplish something while you play... thanks to Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher David Baker at the University of Washington." In collaboration with others, Baker has designed a game, called "Foldit," with a practical outcome: players manipulate on-screen images of protein chains and attempt to predict their folding patterns. From the article: "'Our main goal was to make sure that anyone could do it, even if they didn't know what biochemistry or protein folding was,' says [co-creator Zoran] Popovic. At the moment, the game only uses proteins whose three-dimensional structures have been solved by researchers. But, says Popovic, 'soon we'll be introducing puzzles for which we don't know the solution.'"

A Simpsons quote comes to mind

[Anonymous Coward]

But, says Popovic, 'soon we'll be introducing puzzles for which we don't know the solution.'"

Yay, everyone's a winner!

>----Joke-----

[Eco-Mono]

I always figured protein folding was one of those "hard to do, easy to check" type of things. Then again IANAMB.

Re:----Joke-----

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not a miniature boxer?

Outsourcing bioinformatics!

[cynicsreport]

From TFA:

"My dream is that a 12-year-old in Indonesia will turn out to be a prodigy, and build a cure for HIV,"

We should give David Baker credit for bringing forced child labor into the 21st century! Think about it: thousands of children, solving protein stuctures for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, at $0.50/hour. The prescription drug companies could lay off all their bioinformaticians, outsource their drug discovery program to Indonesia, and cure cancer in one fell swoop.

Sorry; oblig. Re:Outsourcing bioinformatics!

[NotBornYesterday]

thousands of children, solving protein stuctures for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, at $0.50/hour

A Beowulf cluster of them?

look mom, no more cancer

[2TecTom]

how about a quake mod?

Re:No Linux version and no source code

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean it only supports >95% of computer users? What an outrage!

Re:Unprecedented

[Gat0r30y]

teh Matrix.

The marketing guys told us the matrix sounded scary and suspiciously close to something people heard in math class. It has been renamed the cloud - fluffy, pretty, sometimes looking like ducks or the virgin mary - for the public benifit.

Re:No Linux version and no source code

[Anonymous Coward]

I just thought I'd warn you.... Jack Thompson is writing to your mum. He heard about an add-on that lets you shoot law-enforcement genes.

Re:No Linux version and no source code

[Danathar]

Have you tried it? It's INCREDIBLY addicting and just about as simple as Tetris to play. My mother picked it up in under 5 min and was playing for HOURS.

That's enough for me. It's going to be hit.

Re:Is it that hard to actually link to the game?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Oh darn you, you gave away the answer to the puzzle of the missing link. And I was SO CLOSE to solving it myself.

Then there's johnny

[ruiner13]

Johnny discovered the cure for cancer when he was 13. He had the inspired notion to try to fold everything into the shape of a phallus. This, it seems, was the key all along.

National Geographic
March, 2012

Re:No Linux version and no source code

[ORBAT]

And it required administrator privileges to install. Will anyone every learn to problem properly for Windows?

Now that's a Freudian slip if I ever saw one.

Re:Is it that hard to actually link to the game?

[sootman]

Thanks. Eds, take note: please use that link in tomorrow's dupe. kthxbye

Re:Well, the idea is to find out the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Or to give you an analogy, think of the game Atomino. Now think Atomino with several thousand atoms. It's not as much a puzzle, it's something straight from Call Of Chtulhu. If you even managed to wrap your mind around it all, well, it'll probably stay bent ;)

OK, that's it. I'm signing up now!

(Dude, seriously, if you're not on the project staff, you should be -- on Slashdot, that sort of comment is the best recruitment invite that could possibly be written.)