Spanish scientists have created a mobile game that collects data to contribute to cancer research. This way, while riding the subway or waiting for a friend, you can advance cancer research. Marc Martí, researcher and head of the CNAG-CRG Structural Genomics group, points out that “it is a game that aims to find how the genome in cancer cells is organized in sequences”.
It is a game based on real scientific data in which, as Oriol Ripoll, coordinator of the GENIGMA design team, explains, “there are a lot of pieces forming a row that you have to orderin such a way that it gives as many points as possible”.
Thus, the video game aims to obtain a detailed map of the DNA of cells of various cancers. “We have started with a breast cancer cell line, and we hope to obtain results in a month or two months; we will analyze the results of all the players”, indicates Martí.
Reorganize this information from the National Center for Genomic Analysis through group solutions it is more effective than if researchers did it through artificial intelligence, since computers often return unique solutions. “It is an experiment in which we ask the population to help us, because when they are playing, they are giving us back data that is going to be important for research”, highlights the head of the CNAG-CRG Structural Genomics group.
Are needed 30,000 players who complete a minimum of 50 games before April. In this sense, Elisabetta Broglio, facilitator of Citizen Science at the CRG, underlines that in the first two weeks they have reached “17,000 players in more than 123 countries around the world.”
The game, which is Available in Spanish, English and Catalan“has been designed for two and a half years”, and its creators have had “the participation of more than 500 people”, as stated by Broglio.
This game does not claim to cure cancer, but it does will update the reference maps of the genome to design and test treatments.
Source: Lasexta
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