Fight COVID-19 with New Puzzle on Foldit

Coronavirus, otherwise known by its proper name COVID-19, continues to spread across the globe, causing cancelations, public panic, and, most importantly, literally killing human beings. While weve already reported how the gaming industry is being impacted by this deadly new disease, we've yet to say on how gamers could help fight against it (outside of, you know, being sanitary, washing our hands, not touching our faces, and avoiding crowds).

Fortunately, that changes now, as the University of Washington in Seattle has turned to gamers to help accelerate the search for a cure or vaccine.

The game, called Foldit, was released in 2008, and actually has a history of helping researchers better understand cell structure by effectively gamifying and crowdsourcing gamers into doing work that researchers or computers would have had to do anyway. Earlier this week, the game's update included the addition of the COVID-19 virus to the list of cells that players can work on, giving players the chance to help researchers gain a better grasp of the cells structure, which is key to understanding how [a protein] works and to targeting it with drugs.

The virus, which is positioned as a puzzle in the game, has the following description:

Coronaviruses display a spike protein on their surface, which binds tightly to a receptor protein found on the surface of human cells. In recent weeks, researchers have determined the structure of the 2019 coronavirus spike protein and how it binds to human receptors. If we can design a protein that binds to this coronavirus spike protein, it could be used to block the interaction with human cells and halt infection!

You can check out the puzzle here, if you so desire, as well as download Foldit free so you can give it a play yourself. Could be fun, but hey - it's at least helpful.