Protein folding science game

May 4th, 2009
by Liz Henry

This is just damn cool. You can download a game called “FoldIt“. You compete to manipulate models of protein molecules in various ways, and the results may end up being useful.

. . . knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans’ puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

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- More blogging by Liz Henry at http://liz-henry.blogspot.com



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One Response to “Protein folding science game”

  1. Protein folding science game | India News Papers on May 17, 2009 1:45 am

    [...] Source:Protein folding science game [...]

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