Candy Crush to the rescue!
Games like Angry Birds aren’t just inspiring movies, but video games designed to find crowdsourced solutions to some of science’s most challenging problems.
Players of Foldit have designed a handy enzyme to accelerate the production of drugs and figured out the structure of a virus that infects monkeys with a disease similar to AIDS, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
And by emulating the fun factor of Candy Crush and Angry Birds, the designers have made the experience entertaining, thereby attract (free) crowdsourced labor to sort through the reams of data produced by advanced imaging systems and other new technology.
The citizen scientists aren’t necessarily qualified to operate scientific gizmos and gadgets, but via gamification they can be taught to analyze images and design molecules, thereby contributing to the fight against tuberculosis from their armchair.
Here are some online videogames that utilize crowdsourcing to advance scientific researcher, and commentary based on my initial experience with the site.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Eyewire has the ambitious goal of mapping the inside of the brain. In the game, players must map a neuron of the retina of a mouse eye in three all three dimensions using real 2-D imaging data. Each puzzle consists of a “cube,” or a random sample of a mouse brain.
The images contain the outlines of a thicket of neurons. Players must “trace” the preselected individual neuron from one plane of the cube to another by filling in the shapes of the 2-D images, sort of like filling in coloring book. Errors are made if the player mistakenly traces part of another neuron, or fails to find the entire neuron that is targeted.
This probably sounds confusing, and just grasping the point of the game is at first. But I’ve actually found myself hooked. Chatting with experienced players was helpful, as was the tutorial.
There are a lot nuances that I am only just learning, like switching between the 2-D and 3-D visualization modes, and looking for jagged edges of the neuron, which are likely the source of additional branches.
Following the practice rounds, I found myself a little freaked out that I was contributing to scientific research, but the game prompts tell you that it is OK to make mistakes.
Players are scored for accuracy and speed. Accuracy is determined by how well a player’s solution to a particular cube matches up with other players’ solution.
Remember, the correct answer to a particular cube is not known by any individual. The game designers at MIT and Princeton are relying on the collective intelligence of the players to approximate an answer. That’s why it’s called crowdsourcing.
Foldit is an interactive way of teaching crowdsources the basis of protein folding so that they can design novel enzymes with the potential to treat diseases. The “highest scoring” designs are tested by scientists to see if they have any real-world applications.
Developed by at the University of Washington in Seattle, Foldit gives each design a score that tells players how well it is configured based on the scientific principles of protein folding. Crowdsourcers can manipulate individual components of the protein that is presented to them, including the protein’s sidechains and backbone.
Players must complete a set of introductory puzzles, which have goals such as pulling two backbones together to eliminate a void in the protein structure. The score changes to indicate whether the alterations made to the protein configuration are having the desired impact.
While the game gives some feedback, the crowdsourcer must achieve a required score through a process of trial and error. It isn’t always clear why a particular move increases the score, but I suppose that level of understanding is built up over time.
The quirky sound effects are oddly motivating. There’s also a handy chat function for consulting with others.
Foldit players designed an enzyme 18 times more active than the original, demonstrating the power of collective thought and human intuition, according to Scientific American. A total of 190,000 designs were submitted by the gamers. Synthesis of the top ideas resulted in the breakthrough enzyme.
The introduction to Eterna says: “This is a game where you will become an RNA scientist. By solving puzzles, you will build a virtual lab. Then you will help new RNA molecules to combat infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Ready?”
During the training puzzles, players must design RNA molecules that must fold into the pre-specified shape. This can be achieved by modifying the molecular structure of the nucleotides of RNA, adenine, uracil, guanine and cytosine. Some of the nucleotides are “locked,” meaning they cannot be changed by the crowdsourcer.
The initiative is funded by the National Science Foundation. Eterna and developed at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford. As is the case with FoldIt, the most promising RNA designs are synthesized in the lab for further analysis and scientific research.
A paper published in the Journal of Molecular Biology found that Eterna players collectively solved 100 so-called RNA secondary structure design challenges, while top algorithms solved only half.
These games are also revealing insights about human intuition and cognition, not just protein folding or the neurons of a mouse. In a world in which computers are besting world champions at board games like Chess and Go, why did the crowdsourcers perform better?
In addition to synthesizing molecules designed by the crowdsourcers, the academic researchers aim to analyze their solutions and behavior. They will use the man-made data as a basis for the transfer of intuitive methods of problem solving to supercomputers and algorithms, thereby pushing the frontiers of artificial intelligence.
