Eve Online players will classify human body proteins.

The creators of the project Human Protein Atlas (Encyclopedia of Human Proteins), together with the developers of the multiplayer sci-fi online game Eve Online and the Swiss company Massively Multiplayer Online Science, have announced the development of the Project Discovery project . It involves the involvement of players in the useful for science work on the marking of proteins in the atlas. The work will be framed in the form of a mini-game, the pastime in which will be rewarded with game bonuses.

The Human Protein Atlas project, headquartered in Stockholm, contains about 13 million images that need to be tagged for inclusion in an automated database. The project collects information known to science about all the proteins produced by the human body.
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The database accessible to all interested persons shows the spatial distribution of proteins, both in normal tissues of the human body and in various types of tumors. The project was conceived in 2003, and in 2005 - designed in the form of a website. A structured set of data on proteins helps determine the purpose and role of each of them in the body.

The developers of the game from the company CCP Games believe that their game attracts people with a technical mindset, and therefore such tasks will be interesting enough for them. “Our game is great for this kind of assignment,” says Pétur Örn Þórarinsson, design director and lead gameplay designer, known as CCP Scarpia.



“Our audience is an adult, and many players are essentially techies - among them are many practicing scientists, and people interested in science and technology. And most importantly, our audience has repeatedly argued that altruism and philanthropy are no stranger to it. ”

For example, this summer, the charity event " PLEX for GOOD ", announced in support of earthquake victims in Nepal , has collected more than $ 100,000.

Professor Emma Lundberg from the Human Protein Atlas project explains the importance of the encyclopedia. According to her, the project helps to understand cell biology, how the human body works and how diseases develop in it. The better the scientists understand these issues, the better the medicines and methods of treatment will be.

A small team of scientists are not able to cope with the work of categorizing and marking millions of images. They hope that the organized mass of players will be interested and will help them in advancing the project. To begin with, they will be provided with materials related to subcellular issues - a total of about 250,000 images. If successful, the experiment will continue with other images from the database.

Projects of combining the efforts of players for the benefit of science are being carried out by the specialized company Massively Multiplayer Online Science , founded by Bernard Revas and Attila Szantner. Zantner has long been involved in social projects - the social network iWiW, which he founded in 2002, became the largest network in Hungary with 4.7 million users, before Facebook got there.

He tells how in one of the brainstorming about the involvement of people in scientific projects, he was extremely interested in the idea of ​​using online games. “We began to think about the fact that there are games in which a huge number of people spend a lot of time. How can you use this gigantic power for anything that could leave a mark in real life? "

Beautiful, as if not from our world, images of the cellular world are the best suited for a fantastic computer game. Developers from CCP Games are already working on the process of engaging players in useful activities, inventing the appropriate game history and mechanisms for working with images.