Playing This Free Game Can Help You Find the Coronavirus Vaccine
Want to help researchers figure out and find a coronavirus vaccine? Help them by playing this video game .
Foldit is a free puzzle game in which players are asked to fold protein chains to change their behavior. It was originally created by the University of Washington developers in 2008 to collect potential cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and HIV / AIDS, but a new coronavirus puzzle was added this week. Players will need to create or modify proteins that can bind to one of the “spike proteins” of the coronavirus, which will then prevent it from infecting and replicating human cells.
Despite its more technical and exploratory origins, Foldit is quite easy to play – you can even ignore all the medical and scientific jargon and just focus on moving the structure and earning points. All you have to do is click and drag a piece of the squirrel to reshape it, trying to fit any puzzle objective. Foldit rewards players with points based on performance and performance and tracks their results using an in-game scoreboard.
The University of Washington says it will test the most effective solutions to the coronavirus puzzle as possible real-life COVID-19 vaccines. It’s a long journey, but not unprecedented. PCGamer notes that Foldit players helped researchers decipher the AIDS virus in 2011 , which has bothered scientists for years.
Foldit is available free for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can download it here .