The use of games for allowing regular folks to play a part in complex science has been one of the more interesting developments in recent years, and EteRNA is quite probably the most extensive of these.
Indeed, earlier this year the team published an academic paper (which was written collectively by the players) outlining the initial findings from the game.
The study itself was written by three experienced Eterna players. They syndicated their thoughts into a Google document before then sharing that with researchers at Stanford University, where they were independently tested on the university’s supercomputers.
Continuing development
The Stanford developers are not resting on their laurels however, and are working on a new release of the game that will see players work on designing a new molecule for the development of a new test for tuberculosis.
Like the previous version of the game, players will build RNA molecules of increasing complexity. The team believe that the game approach could eventually develop such that players can develop their own medicines.
The team recently developed an accurate test for TB that only requires a small blood sample. The test uses the expression level of a small number of genes, which if expressed in a certain way is a good indicator of TB. Whilst they would love to roll this test out on a pregnancy test style stick, it has thus far proved elusive.
Progress towards this would be significantly helped by understanding the proportions for each of the molecules, which is where the crowd come in.
Crowd science
By turning to players of Eterna, the team hope that thousands of minds can beaver away at creating the molecule capable of doing the right calculation. The process will initially generate a number of possible candidates, which will then be tested in the lab environment, before then progressing to a real stick-test.
Eterna has already achieved a degree of success, so it will be fascinating to see how it gets on in this new domain. Check out the video below for more information on the project.
