Gamers Help Solve HIV Enzyme Structure

Scientists gathered a group of gamers to compete with each other in Foldit, a game designed by researchers at the University of Washington. The game gives players various tools to unfold virtual models of amino acid chains, which is essential to understanding their structure, as well as the structure of the proteins they construct.

Evidently, the enzyme structure, which scientists have been trying to determine for decades, was determined by gamers after three weeks of playing the game. Where were the game players able to succeed where scientists have failed? According to one researcher Firas Khatib, it was the power of intuition.