The game is called Foldit, a crowd-sourced puzzle where players need to fold proteins to alter the behavior of viruses and consequently prevent the spread of disease, an article for Mashable Southeast Asia said.
Is this purely the stuff of science fiction? Not quite, as the developers of the game just this week added COVID-19 as one of the puzzles that players need to solve. It may be just a matter of time before someone sitting in front of the computer actually finds out a way of this current global threat that has already claimed thousands of lives.
What’s promising about this new development is that scientists can pitch in and try to find out a way of neutralizing the dreaded virus. In the game, points are given to those who find solutions for modifying the genes of the virus. The more efficient or effective the solutions are, the higher the score.Now, if only the best players of the game could actually spend enough time to decode COVID-19, we might all be literally a mouse click away from a vaccine – and quite possibly the highest score ever in Foldit.