Crowdsourcing Comes of Age For Molecular Modeling and Drug Discovery
Crowdsourcing—using the collective talent of the Internet to solve problems—has been increasingly used to solve problems and find solutions in the computer software and electronics industry. Over the past few years, several forward-thinking life scientists had proposed the idea that crowdsourcing could possibly be used to solve the molecular structure of proteins that could be used as drug targets. To bring this possibility to reality, in 2008 a team of scientists at the University of Washington created an online, interactive, protein-folding game call Foldit that showcased the principle and properties of protein biochemistry. The thought was that Foldit and its worldwide cadre of users could be used to solve the molecular structure of certain proteins. Since 2008, over 100,000 have downloaded Foldit software and turned into a large, worldwide, multiplayer competition.
Earlier this week a group of scientists reported in the journal Nature Structure & Molecular Biology that Foldit users helped them to determine the molecular structure of a simian HIV protease that had baffled scientists for 15 years. The actual three dimensional structure of the protein that was predicted by Foldit was confirmed by X-ray crystallography. According to the paper’s authors (that included the Foldit players who helped solve the protein’s structure),
“Although much attention has recently been given to the potential of crowdsourcing and game playing, this is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem. These results indicate the potential for integrating video games into the real-world scientific process: the ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.”
Crowdsourcing is a new concept that is beginning to be embraced by the life sciences community including academics as well as industrial scientists. To learn more about crowdsourcing and its use in drug discovery and design, please read an article that I wrote for LifeScienceLeader this past July.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Gaming!!!!!!!!!
Back in 1993 when I was looking for an industrial job, I came across an ad for a research scientist at a Philadelphia-based biopharmaceutical company called Neose. Unlike most other biotechnology companies at the time, the company was focused on identifying and discovering drugs against carbohydrate-based targets—a novel idea at the time. Because I had spent the previous seven years working on carbohydrate biochemistry, I applied for the job and I was invited to interview for the position. At the time, Neose was a small, marginally-funded biotech company that was started in 1993 by a cell biologist from the University of Pennsylvania. 