Friday, February 15, 2013
Room 308 (Hynes Convention Center)
Specific knowledge of protein structures is key to developing targeted drug therapies, but solving the folding patterns of proteins is regarded as among the hardest problems in biology today. FoldIt is a massive online game that combines raw computing power with human puzzle-solving intuition by having people play competitively to fold the best proteins. It boasts more than 250,000 players around the world, multiple scholarly publications, and the solution to an HIV protease structure.