Man or Machine? Bioinformaticians at McGill university are betting on man. They want to put, what was previously wasted, time on the internet into use. Thus, Phylo was created. That is the name of an online interactive game, aiming to solve the problem of multiple sequence alignments, one that has been agonizing researchers for some time now. The human mind is evolved in a way, that even computers supposedly can’t beat. We are capable of recognizing certain patterns and forming interrelations between them, a skill which numerous lines of codes can not easily accomplish.

So what to do? Once you open the link, go ahead and sign up, although it is possible to play as a guest. But hey, if I am taking time off to contribute to science, I want to be able to brag about it later on. 🙂 The creators of the game have formed a very comprehensive tutorial, explaining how the game works. They use down-to-earth terms and comparisons to simplify matters, so people from all walks of life can jump in as well.

The coloured blocks: Those symbolize the nucleotides. Correspondingly, there are four of them: Orange, Green, Blue, Purple. I wasn’t able to find exactly which colour codes for which nucleotide, something which particularly intrigued me, since purple blocks were scanty in my alignment.

Aim of the game: Our job is to align these blocks, as best as possible, so that the blocks’ colour in the first line are matching those in the second line. Matching blocks gives you a score of 1 point and mismatched ones deduct 1 point. This should be preferably done WITHOUT having to create gaps. They point out that gaps represent the mutations, which the sequences have incurred during evolution. In the easier stages, the sequences are provided on two lines, representing two different species. As it gets more difficult, more lines are provided and related together through a mini-phylogenetic tree, to allow you to pinpoint your priorities. Once you have reached the same score a computer had previously provided “par”, a star will blink to indicate that you are ready to move on, as the alignments are stored in a database for future use.

My experience: I stumbled upon a feature, where you can choose the type of sequences you want to work with. They are arranged according to disease, level ID, or simply random. I chose the blood and immune system disorders and was granted sequences, related to essential thrombocytopenia.

Statistics: At the end, I was provided with the following astonishing numbers. So far, 5344 users have submitted 70196 alignments for 2137 different levels. Personally, I think this number is quite surprising, since that many people are joining in since only November 29th, the date of the official launch.

Interested in more: In the “about” page, the following sentence is provided: “For more information about any one of these topics, click here“.