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| What a noob... |
Noticed this article on GamesRadar yesterday and I thought I'd bring a little more attention. What do you get when you cross a Carnegie Mellon University and a Stanford University development collaboration and mix it with the support of the National Science Foundation... that's right, a video game! EteRNA is a game that teaches you about the fundamental building blocks of RNA, real world application, and how you can help science simply by playing!
EteRNA is simple enough, you have to fold your RNA sequence into a target shape using the attractions between nucleotides. That sounds really complicated but through a short series of tutorials it just ends up becoming an interesting puzzle game. The real world application comes from players, like you and I, putting together complex shapes that would take an enormous amount of time for computers to do the same. However, players can come up with more efficient models or easier ways to construct RNA. Once you become good enough you can enter their lab challenges and help other players possibly discover new RNA combinations that can be applied in a real world laboratory.
So stop playing Paper Toss and Angry Birds and go do what every weight-loss supplement infomercial claims to... "Do science!"
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