Are you a Foldit savant?

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I just heard a story on National Public Radio's All Things Considered show about a video game that medical scientists created designed to advance medical science. I am not clear on the details, so here is the link to a podcast of the broadcast. public.Link

The bottom line is that they created a video game called "Foldit" which will help them in their studies. They faced a series of puzzles which they realized might be better accomplished by others who were good at these sorts of puzzles.

They call those who are especially good at this "Foldit savants." I suspect that those on the spectrum would be among the best of the best at this. This is a volunteer sort of thing, but could lead to great sense of accomplishment. Here is the link to check it out.- Foldit portal If you are going to play video games anyway, why not?

I am too new to post a link yet, but just Google foldit and the site will come up. I've seen it before, but never did it. Might try it though.

I am too new to post a link yet, but just Google foldit and the site will come up. I've seen it before, but never did it. Might try it though.

I am too new to post a link yet, but just Google foldit and the site will come up. I've seen it before, but never did it. Might try it though.

I am too new to post a link yet, but just Google foldit and the site will come up. I've seen it before, but never did it. Might try it though.

Ohhh sorry! It only went through once on my end.

That looks interesting. I'll give it a try when I'm home. I suspect I won't be good at it though!

I used to play that game back when my special interest was DNA and genetic engineering. I wasn't particularly good at it, though, because my visuo-spatial skills really lag behind my verbal skills. Honestly, I was never a pro at any computer game, even though I've played hundreds of them. Foldit was really fun to play, but I stopped because it began to interfere with my actual biology and chemistry studies. What a bummer

It's horribly difficult! But I'm getting the idea as to why protein folding is such an important thing.