EAGER: Collaborative Research: G&V: Evolving Social Computation in an RNA World

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AbstractCareers in experimental science allow some researchers to push these frontiers of human knowledge to remote phenomena, from the formation of structure at cosmological scales to the self-assembly of protein enzymes. Non-experts have few channels to deeply experience these revelations due to several barriers: the time required to master technical details, the spatial distance to experts and educators, and the financial expense of careful experimentation. This research is creating a system that removes these barriers to scientific exploration for non-experts, in a frontier field that has attracted wide scientific and public interest: the engineering of nanoscale molecules into complex shapes. An internet-scale gaming infrastructure is being created that will enable hundreds of thousands of game players to jointly explore the conformational space of ribonucleic acid (RNA) designs. As players explore a simulated RNA design space, their efforts produce a prioritized list of candidate designs which are synthesized immediately in the PI?s biochemistry lab. Experimental results then feed back into the game?s incentive structure. The players? collective efforts thus move beyond simulation into real biochemical experimentation. Also, it is currently unknown how to maximally exploit the ?network effect? of cooperation in multiplayer search games. Successful designs must both reward individual exploration and incentivize knowledge sharing. To unite these goals, the PIs are experimenting with several advances in collaborative scoring. Thus, within the new field of nano-engineering, the system will enhance the toolkit of RNA sequences that self-assemble into complex three-dimensional shapes from the ?bottom-up?: knots, polyhedra, and additional novel shapes never before seen with RNA. The project is producing advances in the nascent field of socially intelligent computing.