A video game developed in Barcelona, Spain, will help scientists advance research into breast cancer. In other words, play a game and solve a problem.
Players help to create a map of cancer cell lines by playing the game. That's important because high-resolution maps of cancer cell lines are needed to help scientists interpret their research. The problem is that creating these maps requires vast computer power.
Or maybe it just requires a lot of people working on tiny parts of the problem. That's where the game comes in.
The free game, called GENIGMA, is now available for iOS and Android phones and asks players to solve a puzzle involving a string of blocks of different shape and colors. Each string represents a genetic sequence in the cancer cell line. Players have to organize the blocks to get the highest score. The higher the score, the higher the chance that the correct sequence has been found.
The scientists hope that if 30,000 players solve an average of 50 games, there would be enough data to reveal the reference map for 20,000 genes in the breast cancer cell line.
