When a brand-new protein rolls off the ribosome assembly line within a cell, it's basically just a strip of amino acids in a pre-determined sequence. It then quickly bends, twists and folds itself ...

Foldit, which makes protein folding into an immersive online game playable by the general public, has helped discover information with implications for the design of better AIDs drugs. The ...

(CBS/AP) Online gaming is fun but not a productive use of time, right? Not so fast. Online gamers have deciphered the molecular structure of a key protein that retroviruses like HIV/AIDS need to ...

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts. The next time someone tells you that playing video games is a waste of ...

Leave it to video gamers to find a better way to shepherd proteins into their optimal three-dimensional shapes. Plying a freely available game and matched against automated computer routines designed ...

Almost 60,000 people around the world have played Foldit, a game much like Tetris that involves folding proteins to tackle problems in medicine such as disabling the flu virus. Elizabeth Armstrong ...

The problem of calculating the way proteins fold is one that requires immense computational power, but can be helped along by humanity’s innate ability to solve 3D ...

In 2008, University of Washington scientists released the game Foldit, hoping a sort of critical mass of gamers would mess around with proteins and, in the process, uncover some of their intrigue. (We ...

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 ...

Several vaccines are already in the pipeline to counter the devastating threat posed by the Ebola virus in Africa, but game players are using a collaborative puzzle program called Foldit to help look ...

Figure 1: Crystal structure of Foldit design is similar to player model. Helix 2 (which was designed to interact with helix 1, and corresponds to residues 48 to 56 in the designed enzyme) is well ...