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Phylo

Another good year for gamers who help scientists

It's been a good year for video gamers--and not just the epic legions of Call of Duty fans enjoying Modern Warfare 3.

A few months after Foldit players helped decode the structure of a protein key to the way HIV multiplies, another group of gamers taking on DNA sequencing in the game Phylo have contributed more than 350,000 solutions, the game's designers at McGill University report.

When University of Washington researchers unveiled Foldit in 2008, it wasn't clear whether the protein-folding game would be a one hit wonder. But one-year-old Phylo, already averaging 1,000 eureka … Read more

Phylo, a game that helps map genetic code

Human brains can be better at visual-pattern recognition than even the best computers. And that's the idea behind a fun new puzzle game with the not-so-fun name Phylo: A Human Computing Framework for Comparative Genomics (Phylo for short). It lets players race against time to match moving blocks into like patterns that actually give scientists insight into genetic code.

Pieces in the game, created by bioinformaticians at Canada's McGill University and officially launched yesterday, represent parts of the human genome. By solving each puzzle, a person is actually helping create multiple sequence alignments, which are arrangements of sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein that identify regions of similarity. The idea is that biologists can then gather genetic data about the strands that the puzzles represent to find genetic links between species.

The puzzles get harder as the game goes on, making for good replay. People play against the computer, as well as others, to get the best possible score on each puzzle, with scores depending on how the colored shapes are arranged. There are no concrete prizes, but it's still a fun and challenging way to get bragging rights (the only gripe I had while playing is that the orange and green blocks can be confusing for those of us who are color blind). … Read more

Microbes may be to thank for BP oil spill cleanup

Humans may have naturally occurring nanotechnology to thank for partially cleaning up the oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that previously undiscovered ocean floor microbes have literally risen to the occasion and begun degrading the giant underwater oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico.

While there was belief that some ocean microbes might aid in the degradation of the oil spill, the process has happened more aggressively than anyone predicted it would, according to a report from environmental biotechnologists at the Berkeley Lab.

One of the giant oil plumes that formed … Read more