Gamers Solve RNA Structures
Gamers Solve RNA Structures An online competition gives citizen scientists a chance to design RNA molecules to generate a target structure. Predicting RNA folding can be complex, even with the best in silico models. To help address this challenge, researchers created a game called EteRNA, which after being played by more than 37,000 citizen scientists online, helped generate a new algorithm that predicts RNA folding more accurately than previous algorithms. Details of the game and its findings were published yesterday (January 27) in PNAS . “It's pretty amazing stuff,” Erik Winfree of the California Institute of Technology, who did not participate in the research, told Science NOW . Every week, EteRNA participants designed sequences based on a target structure in the browser-based gaming interface. The top eight possibilities were chosen by the players’ vote and then synthesized and analyzed in the lab. Based on the reported folding outcomes of the...