Gamers Beat Scientists in Solving Monkey AIDS Mystery

After boggling scientists for a decade, a complicated question involving a monkey virus similar to AIDS was solved in 10 days by a British woman after it was posted on a website featuring video games connected with medical and science questions.

The woman, a science technician going by the name "mimi," managed to answer a mystery involving retroviral proteases and Mason-Pfizer disease, a simian AIDS-like disease. The question about the protease was on Fold.it, a website developed by the University of Washington that features games that, if solved, can be applied to real-life science issues.

The advance has given the medical world hope that other issues, like the persistence of AIDS, for example, can be solved by releasing them out on the internet. Read more here.