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Who would have thought a video game could identify potential treatments for COVID-19? Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design certainly thought so, and so far the game has produced 99 chances to win.

The game is a protein-folding puzzler called Foldit, which was created at UW’s Center for Game Science more than a decade ago and has attracted nearly more than 750,000 registered players since then.

Foldit’s fans find ways to twist virtual protein structures into all sorts of contortions. Some of those contortions turn out to have therapeutic value, which can raise a player’s score in the game. And that can have real-world implications for countering the coronavirus.

On the cellular level, protein structures can switch on biological processes, or act as keys to spring open the locks that protect cells from harm. For example, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-Cov-2, has a spike-like protein structure that’s particularly well-shaped for unlocking a cell’s defenses and getting inside to do its dirty work.

Once researchers mapped the virus’ shape, the Institute for Protein Design set up a challenge for Foldit’s players. They were tasked with folding virtual proteins into shapes that could latch onto the coronavirus’ skeleton key and gum it up, rendering it useless for a cellular break-in.

Thousands of designs were submitted and scored over the course of three rounds of competition. Now the institute’s researchers have selected 99 designs, 33 from each round, that will be turned into real-world proteins known as binders for testing as antiviral agents.

“It will be a few more weeks before genes arrive and we can begin experiments on the Foldit designs,” Brian Koepnick, a UW biochemist who focuses on Foldit, told players in blog post. “In the meantime, we’ll continue to work on designing better binders in Foldit.”

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In an earlier blog post, Koepnick cautioned players that the synthetic proteins don’t always work as well in the real world as they do in Foldit’s computer-generated chemistry lab.

“Protein binder design is a very hard problem — one at the forefront of computational biology — and there are other physical factors that are difficult to account for,” he wrote. “Even if our metrics look good on paper or on a computer, only laboratory testing will tell us whether these designer proteins actually fold and bind to the target.”

But if the institute can turn one of the 99 designs into a workable drug that can stop coronavirus in its tracks, Foldit players won’t be the only winners.

To get in on the game, head on over to the Foldit website, download the software and follow the instructions. After you get a feel for the game by playing the tutorials, check out this 49-minute video for tips on tackling the coronavirus puzzles.

Update for 11:35 p.m. PT April 1: We’ve updated some outdated figures for the number of registered Foldit players.