To celebrate this event, the scientific journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, which published the discovery Sunday, said players "Fold" as co-authors of the study.
Folders ("fold them") is an experimental video game developed in 2008 following the collaboration between computer science and biochemistry departments of the University of Washington (USA), all accessible on the Internet (http://fold.it).
His goal: solve, by human players, a problem that can not be solved by computers, and how a molecule is "folded" to form a three-dimensional structure, thus giving rise to a protein.
"People have the ability to judge space much more than computers," said Seth Cooper, one of the creators Fold.
"The results published this week show that by combining the game, and computer science, we arrive at findings that were not contemplated before," he adds.
Identifying the exact configuration of a protein is often vital to understand how to develop a disease (infection, cancer, etc..) Inside the body and especially to create a drug able to stop.
Unfortunately for biologists, not a microscope image provides only a "payment" of the protein.
3D
One of the most challenging tasks for scientists is the molecule in 3D reconstruction and identification of areas where drugs could act.
For over a decade, researchers have sought to model an enzyme used by a retrovirus, which belongs to the family and HIV.
This type of enzymes, called proteases retroviral plays a fundamental role in how the AIDS virus proliferates.
Doctors are convinced that inhibiting them may more effectively fight against the disease but, in the absence of accurate knowledge of the structure of this enzyme, it was very difficult to identify substances able to block them.
Then they called on the ingenuity of players to fold.
Divided into competing teams, thousands of players worldwide, students or retirees, are manipulated in cyberspace chains of amino acids in all combinations imaginable, in an attempt to reach a viable structure.
In this task they received assistance program Rosetta after Rosetta stone from which he allowed Champollion to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Protein models submitted by players through the Internet were so close to reality as researchers have had only takes a few days to determine the exact formula of the enzyme.
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