Crowdsourcing : using the online puzzle game“Foldit” to design new antiretroviral drugs 1.Introduction to crowdsourcing 2.FOLDIT 3.Impact and implications 4.Other examples of crowdsourcing 5.Discussion By Bronagh Carey,

What is CROWDSOURCING ? Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to an undefined large group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.

 Foldit is an online experimental puzzle video game about protein folding developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry.  The designers were: Seth Cooper, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Zoran Popvic, David Baker, David Salesin

 The software presents an image of the protein and the player manipulates the image according to set of tools  The tools are based on physics: e.g opposite charges attract etc  The human brain is better attuned to analysing 3D structures  Players don’t have to a have a scientific background – any age can play  The better the fold the more points they get

 Gamers share and join groups and share best results  Winning protein designs are analysed in Baker's lab and tested in petri dishes  Proteins are part of the disease, they are also part of the cure  Knowing the structure of proteins is the key to creating drugs to combat them

“Foldit” uses the human brain to predict folds within protein structures.

 In 2011 Scientist Mariusz Jaskolski of A. Mickiewicz University in Poland approached David Baker to ask FOLDIT players to map the crystal structure of M-PMV retroviral protease - basically the protein involved in the HIV virus  600 players from 41 teams submitted more than 1.25 million solutions  5,000 of the best answers were analysed  The group “the Contenders” were able to produce an accurate model of the protein structure  Cracking this enzyme provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs

 Scientists were trying to solve this for over 10 years, Gamers were able to do it within 10 days by playing the foldit game. 1  “It’s kind of an unprecedented case of using computing non-specialists to solve a longstanding scientific problem” 2 1.Veverka, V. et al. J. Mol. Biol. 333, 771–780 (2003). 2. Alexander Wlodawer, chief of the Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute.

 ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize  gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before  People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at  Michael Nielsen author of “Reinventing Discovery” believes there is a major paradigm shift on how Scientific discoveries are being made, publically funded science should be open science distinct paradigm shift in the way Science is being conducted

Boinc - Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.   

Galaxy Zoo -

ProsCons Thousands of non scientific people can help further discoveries in Science Invasion of privacy Satisfaction in joining crowd scouring projects Wiki leaks - ethics Video games may help livesAdded cost Creates a culture of sharingNo written contracts Projects may fail There are ethical, social, and economic implications of crowdsourcing.