"You can explore things that look crazy. When we first saw this particular design we thought it looked crazy," says Donald Hilvert, a biochemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who is collaborating with the researchers to further refine the protein through directed evolution.

There are no immediate applications for the particular Diels-Alder reaction that this enzyme catalyses, and, compared with naturally occurring enzymes that catalyze other reactions, it's not very active. But it marks a milestone in showing what crowdsourcing research can achieve.

Baker is now looking toward more useful targets. The team reported last year that they had designed small protein inhibitors that bind to and block the 1918 pandemic influenza virus⁴. "Now Foldit players are working to make more potent inhibitors," Baker said. "Those are exciting because those could be drugs."

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on January 22, 2012.

9 Comments

1. 1. atomikrabbit 10:19 PM 1/22/12

   How many crowdsourced gamers will we need to figure out how to make the Israelis and Arabs live in peace?

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2. 2. Polynumeral in reply to atomikrabbit 01:52 AM 1/23/12

   I can't see why someone couldn't at least try it.It is only a game after all and if no solution is presented then no harm done,but if a solution is achieved then wow.
   While Foldit is at it why don't the Foldit group ask the gamers to improve the Haber process ?? I am thinking the concept can be applied to non biological problems.

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3. 3. stargene 02:37 AM 1/23/12

   The reference to directed evolution recalls evolutionary algorithms and genetic programming, where for example populations of computer programs can be made to
   evolve ways (via 'mutation, crossovers, selection etc.') to create solutions to problems (eg: in electrical engineering).
   
   The Foldit project seems to qualify as an example of
   James Surowiecki's book "The Wisdom of Crowds" and his criteria for best decision making by crowds/groups
   
   1) Diversity of opinion
   2) Independence
   3) Decentralization
   4) Method of Aggregation of Results
   
   Ie: Bad decision making by large groups involved the
   lack of one or more of the above four conditions.
   
   A short Wikipedia entry is at:
   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wisdom_of_crowds
   
   It struck me that in a very loose way, these criteria also define some of the conditions prevailing in the biological world for the evolution of new species
   of organisms. Ie: Populations undergoing selection-forces contain a vast diversity of genetic information and undergo independent mutations and cross-over
   events...etc.
   
   Does anybody know of a formal connection between the two phenomena?
   

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4. 4. tharter in reply to stargene 11:53 AM 1/23/12

   No, but I see what you mean.

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5. 5. dubina in reply to Polynumeral 04:55 PM 1/24/12

   @Polynumeral
   
   "I am thinking the concept can be applied to non biological problems."
   
   Absolutely. Newsvine typically seeds public opinion with political issues, then collects public opinion and datamines it for emergent structure. What is crowdsourcing but that?
   

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6. 6. tvkrishnam 02:59 AM 1/25/12

   Can we use crowd sourcing to change political thinking. For instance the geographic boundaries of nation states was dictated by geographic barries. Today it is defined by special interests - immigration.
   An individual is NOT free to travel and should be free to as long as he/she has not violated the laws of the nations he/she belongs to and the nation he/she wants to visit.
   Can we try such ideas and change the systems in wild West?

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7. 7. Olga Werby 07:56 PM 1/25/12

   Crowd sourcing is an amazing tool for science. Congratulation to the FoldIt team and players! There's a lot of potential to using the crowds and clouds -- to explore the geo-temporal tagging, I've set the CrowdMappers LinkedIn group. Those that are interested, I hope you join our discussions -- I'm posting the link to this article to our group. Thanks!

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8. 8. bucketofsquid 12:15 PM 1/31/12

   FoldIt works because the system whereby FoldIt progresses has a fundamental structure within which the players have a great deal of flexibility. Crowdsourcing frequently fails when the decision making is left unstructured. When I have a cola company the last thing I want from my crowdsourcing effort is the result of "orange juice".
   The crowdsourcing has to have that fundamental set of rules that prohibits completely undesirable results. After all, a riot is also a result of crowdsourcing.

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9. 9. Jahnka 11:04 PM 4/25/12

   As GM found out when they crowdsourced the Electric Car. To bad they and the oil companies make too much money on the gas powered ones, but if your CS effort resulted in "OJ" wouldn't you shift at least some effort to producing it?? (Unless it cut into your cola sales)
   
   You don't need to set rules, just weigh all the outcomes, besides... who is going to decide "undesirable"? After all, the Christmas Truce was a result of crowdsourcing. (But VERY undesirable to those trying to wage war, and also to those making a profit off outfitting the troops, selling tanks, bullets, etc.)
   
   @atomikrabbit - you just need to design the game! I think the movie "Wargames" might be a good start.

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