Also Awesome: New video game makes game players Stanford professor's virtual lab assistants

via med.stanford.edu

From the Stanford site:

"Jackie Gu’s mom thought her daughter was just goofing off, and told her to knock it off already with the online video game she spent so much time playing last summer. Little did she know that her 14-year old was actually advancing the progress of science.

The video game, called EteRNA, was designed by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University. EteRNA taps gamers’ skills to accelerate biochemists’ understanding of DNA’s once-unsung chemical cousin, RNA. Gamers — no experience is necessary — design molecules composed of RNA, which is now “the emerging superstar in the field of biochemistry,” according to Rhiju Das, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry at Stanford...."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales