Aman Tripathi – A new study published in Nature Biotechnology on April 15 has shown that gamers can significantly enhance scientific research.
Recently, as many as 4.5 million gamers across the world played a minigame within the popular title Borderlands 3, which helped map the evolutionary history of bacteria found within the human gut.
It can help scientists draw a “better tree” of bacteria living in our guts, which play a crucial role in maintaining health. The research also has the potential to gain new insights into how our diet, medications, and lifestyle choices influence our microbial communities.
Tracing games with amazing outcomes
Under this groundbreaking project, gamers were asked to play Borderlands Science, a mini-game within the popular video game Borderlands 3.
The minigame looked like a puzzle where players needed to match up tiles that represented sequences of microbial DNA.
Notably, the scientists were “amazed” by the results of the study. In fact, the gamers proved to be much better at spotting patterns and connections between the bacteria than even the advanced AI algorithms.
“We didn’t know whether the players of a popular game like Borderlands 3 would be interested or whether the results would be good enough to improve on what was already known about microbial evolution,” admitted Jérôme Waldispühl, Associate Professor at McGill University’s School of Computer Science.
Praising the study’s impact, Jérôme added, “In half a day, the Borderlands Science players collected five times more data about microbial DNA sequences than our earlier game, Phylo, had collected over a 10-year period.”
This, eventually, assisted scientists in tracing the relationships between over a million different species of microbes in the human gut.
A collaborative effort
The project was conducted jointly by researchers at McGill University, Gearbox Entertainment Company, Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS), and the University of California San Diego.
CEO and co-founder of MMOS, Attila Szantner, who pitched the idea of integrating DNA analysis into a commercial video game, said, “As almost half of the world population is playing with videogames, it is of utmost importance that we find new creative ways to extract value from all this time and brainpower that we spend gaming.”
Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of Gearbox Entertainment Company, Randy Pitchford, expressed pride and stated, “Gearbox’s developers were eager to engage millions of Borderlands players globally with our creation of an appealing in-game experience to demonstrate how clever minds playing Borderlands are capable of producing tangible, useful, and valuable scientific data at a level not approachable with non-interactive technology and mediums.”
Future benefits
The human body is a highly complex ecosystem, home to trillions of microbes. Therefore, a sound understanding of these microbial communities is crucial in maintaining human health.
While we are at the primary stages of understanding the world of microbes, projects like Borderlands Science could revolutionize how we perceive and approach health.
Talking about the benefits of the study, Rob Knight of UC San Diego said the information collected through the Borderlands Science project can be used to “relate specific kinds of microbes to what we eat, to how we age, and to the many diseases.”
Besides, this project is a testament to the power of citizen science and the innovative potential of video games. It can also help improve AI algorithms that can be used to analyze DNA sequences in future.
“Borderlands Science created an incredible opportunity to engage with citizen scientists on a novel and important problem,” stated Daniel McDonald, the Scientific Director of the Microsetta Initiative.
SF Source Interesting Engineering Apr 2024