Game Classification

Foldit is an experimental video game about protein folding, developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry (many of the same people who created Rosetta@home).

Foldit provides a series of tutorials in which the user manipulates simple protein-like structures, and a periodically updated set of puzzles based on real proteins. As the structure is modified, a "score" is calculated based on how well-folded the protein is, and a list of high scores for each puzzle is maintained.

The process by which living beings create the primary structure of proteins, protein biosynthesis, is reasonably well understood. Determining how the primary structure of a protein turns into a functioning three-dimensional structure – how the molecule "folds" – is more difficult; the general process is known, but predicting protein structures is computationally demanding.

Foldit is an attempt to apply the human brain's natural three-dimensional pattern matching abilities to this problem. Current puzzles are based on well-understood proteins; by analysing the ways in which humans intuitively approach these puzzles, researchers hope to improve the algorithms employed by existing protein-folding software.

It's a brilliant example of Serious Game aimed to collect data from people, in order to help scientific research.

Distribution : Internet - Free
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Linux) - PC (Windows)

Links

• Download it Now !
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit
• http://fold.it/