Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game

Seth Cooper, Firas Khatib, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Jeehyung Lee, Michael Beenen, Andrew Leaver-Fay, David Baker (), Zoran Popović () and Foldit Players
Additional contact information
Seth Cooper: University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Firas Khatib: University of Washington, Box 357350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Adrien Treuille: University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Janos Barbero: University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Jeehyung Lee: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA
Michael Beenen: University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Andrew Leaver-Fay: University of Washington, Box 357350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
David Baker: University of Washington, Box 357350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Zoran Popović: University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA

Nature, 2010, vol. 466, issue 7307, 756-760

Abstract: Many hands make light work A natural polypeptide chain can fold into a native protein in microseconds, but predicting such stable three-dimensional structure from any given amino-acid sequence and first physical principles remains a formidable computational challenge. Aiming to recruit human visual and strategic powers to the task, Seth Cooper, David Baker and colleagues turned their 'Rosetta' structure-prediction algorithm into an online multiplayer game called Foldit, in which thousands of non-scientists competed and collaborated to produce a rich set of new algorithms and search strategies for protein structure refinement. The work shows that even computationally complex scientific problems can be effectively crowd-sourced using interactive multiplayer games.

Date: 2010
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DOI: 10.1038/nature09304

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