Just another day of puzzle solving for a gamer

It's no big surprise that many gamers are advanced in puzzle solving. Puzzle solving has been a part of gameplay for as long as I've been playing games. That's why it's no real huge surprise when I read that groups of gamers helped scientist crack an enzyme that is a building block for a family of retroviruses of which contain HIV.

For three weeks, gamers were told to unfold chains of amino acids using a set of online tools in a game that was developed in 2008 by the University of Washington named Foldit. After three weeks they were able to successfully complete the task in which computers and other automated tasks have not been able to do so yet. Even the science community is shocked that in such a short time a fully completed model could have been made by someone outside of the community.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release."The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

This is great news for our gaming community as it now tells the story of how all that time spent playing video games may have helped develop an advanced problem solving side to our way of thinking allowing us to perform something that no one or thing has been able to. It has not been a waste of time as some think and it has not rotted our minds as so many who are opposed to this form of entertainment has tried to have so many believe. Now we have a new possible study in the works.

 Foldit is now also playable to the public. It is in beta but works really well. So go out there and see if you too can save the world.