Toronto Star - Play this video game, help research disease
It鈥檚 called Phylo, and it鈥檚 a computer game with a scientific mission: to solve the gaps in genome alignment so biologists can better understand the causes of disease. It鈥檚 the brainchild of a group of computer scientists and students at 平特五不中.
Last summer Phylo was born with the help of two 平特五不中 undergrads, Alex Kawrykow and Gary Roumanis, who spent the summer break building the online Flash game.
Basically, it鈥檚 like Tetris: a pattern-matching game with a genetic twist, said Jerome Waldispuhl, an associate professor in computer science at 平特五不中, in an interview with the Star. Each puzzle solved will help map out diseases in the human genome, according to the game鈥檚 Facebook page.
鈥淕enetic sequences are difficult to understand and so to decipher their structure, we need to compare them to detect any similar regions they may have,鈥� the game鈥檚 website explains. 鈥淪imilar regions may indicate important elements of our genetic code. We have several genomes to align, and we call this the multiple alignment problem.鈥�