Play Eterna Medicine!

Fans of video games will help scientists in the fight against tuberculosis

Evgenia Efimova, Vesti

Scientists from Stanford University Medical School have created a new version of the browser-based computer game Eterna Medicine, which will use the creative thinking abilities of thousands of players (Researchers release video game to help build a better test for tuberculosis).

But the goal facing developers is more global than just entertaining people. Experts intend to develop a molecule that will help create a new test for tuberculosis.

To date, the statics are depressing: tuberculosis affects a third of the world's population, killing about 1.5 million people annually. Nevertheless, despite the horrifying figures, healthcare organizations do not have an easy-to-use blood test that can detect active infection in people, especially in remote villages and villages.

A team of researchers from Stanford has come up with a test that will help accurately diagnose tuberculosis from a blood sample. The test focuses on the expression levels (activity) of three genes. Certain proportions of expression levels indicate that the patient has tuberculosis.

However, there is one "but": scientists need a molecule that will help accurately calculate these proportions. At the moment, such a life-saving molecule is unknown to doctors.

According to the researchers, there is still one way out of this situation – civil science. Scientists need to attract the creative forces of people, and this is planned to be done just with the help of the game Eterna Medicine. Fans of video games in theory can help create a virtual model of the necessary RNA molecule.

Molecular biologists hope to get tens of thousands of designs from which it will be possible to choose several "projects" with potential. After that, scientists will carefully check the variants of the molecule designs, select 10-20 samples and synthesize them in the laboratory in order to test their operability. The necessary molecule, which the Americans are just going to create, has already been called OpenTB in absentia.

The first version of the Eterna game was launched five years ago in order to allow ordinary people who have nothing to do with the world of science to create potentially useful biomolecules. Such molecules must be stable enough to function inside living cells.

Over the years, yesterday's simple gamers have become more and more aware of this area, becoming experts in the construction of complex RNA molecules in parallel. Moreover, some of them have even become co-authors of scientific papers in the field of molecular biology.

Now scientists are setting a different task for fans of video games: to design a molecule that will help save the lives of millions of people.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  10.05.2016