Last year, two teams of gamers co-authored a paper describing an HIV-related protein that had long stumped scientists. Not only did they puzzle out the protein’s elusive shape, they did it in just three weeks. Their scientific method: Play a multiplayer online game called Foldit.

Protein folding is one of the hardest computational problems in biology. The get-it-done chemicals of life, proteins power muscles, transport signals through the brain, and defend against germs. A protein’s function partially depends on how its long chains of chemical building blocks fold into a compact and chemically stable shape. And determining that shape can lead to new treatments for diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s. Surprisingly, it seems that teams of human beings motivated by curiosity and competition might do this better than the most sophisticated computers.

(Source: futurenow321)