john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

gamification

  • The RNA game

    Sun, 2012-07-01 08:23 -- John Hawks

    It's hard to predict folding patterns of RNA in cells. As Hayley Dunning describes, RNA has been "gamified" to give scientists some help: "Toying with RNA".

    Players of the game EteRNA are given a real-world RNA shape and asked to manipulate a chain of nucleotides to fit that shape, by observing how different patterns of nucleotides form certain structures, like loops or tails. Then, every week, a few molecules are selected for synthesis in a lab at Stanford to see how closely they match the desired shape.

    The game itself, "EteRNA", is pretty cute. It took me a few tries to realize it's pronounced like the first six-sevenths of "eternal".

    I wish there were some way to gamify paleoanthropology. I mean, something more illuminating than just sticking Neandertals into World of Warcraft.

    Tags: 
    gamification
    citizen science

  • Phylo, the genomics game

    Thu, 2012-06-14 09:30 -- John Hawks

    NOVA describes how some genomics problems are being solved using computer gaming: "Gaming and genomics".

    "When a computer tries to solve the problem, it will always try to solve it the same way – the way it has been programmed to solve it," says co-creator Mathieu Blanchette. "Whereas humans, because we don't tell them how to solve it, they'll have different strategies. That will provide us with a variety of different solutions, some of which will turn out to be better than those found by the computer."

    Therefore, asking a lot of people to solve the same problem often gives the best results, and that is what Waldispühl and Blanchette have done. They've crowdsourced the game. They've put it up on the web for anyone to play. About 500 people a day are playing it from all over the world, according to the scientists.

    The challenge for many of us is to find ways to break down problems into these small parts that can be distributed.

    Tags: 
    genomics
    gamification
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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.