Fraxinus: a Facebook game to crowdsource the fight against ash dieback disease HD
Please share and embed this video with credit to BBSRC. See full press release here: http://bit.ly/14Gxc2u Let scientists keep the lab coat, goggles and pipe…
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Greenpeace’s one-of-a-kind new flagship ship, the Rainbow Warrior, is in Seattle this weekend for free public tours. The 3o million dollar paid for by crowd …
Hi, so you take the target pattern and the sequence and look at how the two
are currently aligned. For every matched pair you get 1 point (so you can
get a maximum number of points equal to the length of the target pattern.)
For every mismatched one you lose 3pts. You lose 5pts for inserting a gap,
and lose 2pts for extending an existing gap. All points for all sequences
in the display are summed to give you the total score. Hence >1000pt scores
when doing well and negative when doing badly.
Nice video on the new Fraxinus game for Facebook: real scientific problems
tackled using a crowdsourcing approach and real data for gaming. Please
share this video (if you like it ;-)
cool
“In December 2012, scientists from The Sainsbury Laboratory hired
Sheffield-based gaming company Team Cooper to develop ‘Fraxinus’. The game
uses real genetic data from the fungus which causes Chalara ash dieback and
from the common ash, Fraxinus excelsior.
It involves matching and rearranging patterns of coloured leaf shapes which
represent nucleotides – the letters that make up a genome sequence. People
are better at this than computers alone, because the human eye can
recognise patterns that computers miss.
The Facebook game is part of a rapid response to ask dieback funded by the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), which
includes understanding more about the disease, how it attacks ash trees,
finding natural resistance and predicting and mitigating disease
progression.”
Time to play Fraxinus. #dnasequencing #facebookgames #crowdsourcing
Fraxinus game now played in more than 80 countries since launch this week.
See this 5min video to see how gaming and crowdsourcing can advance
research to tackle diseases….
Can I play this game on my iPhone?
Hi pmcleod999, indeed there is a paper that explains the theory behind how
projects like this work. We can post links here, but if you search for
‘Phylo: A Citizen Science Approach for Improving Multiple Sequence
Alignment’ that has info on how puzzle games like Fraxinus (in this case
the Phylo game) use games for the MSAs (multiple sequence alignments).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031362 . Given time we’re sure there will be one
specific to Fraxinus.
Hi LaAttiDah, some notes from the game-makers: As in many puzzle games
Fraxinus is open-ended with respect to strategy; it provides the rules and
you provide the brains and solutions. Match as many or as few as you think
you need to. You can also delete or leave the odd colours to win. Only by
scoring higher can you claim the pattern. The game was widely tested
including school-age children (as in the video), so its pitched at all
ages. Thanks for the time you’ve invested already.
Hi Smiffy, alas, at present the game is only available on desktops and
laptops. This isn’t an oversight, more that the scientists had a limited
time and budget to get things going (and time is of the essence with the
ash dieback problem) and so there’s no mobile version at present.
Not enough of an explanation as to what is required. What does the x mean
and the exclamation mark.? Let us see someone playing with comments without
the music.
Stop the de de de de de de de de etc etc pleeeeeaaaasssseeee.
1. NPR report told me about the game 2. I do not understand the game. 3.
The instructions did not explain the 25 rows of colors, do I have to match
all 25 rows? 3. do I delete ever odd color to claim a pattern 4. do I leave
the gaps 5. do I squished the colors together 6. what about all the left
over colors 7. should beta-test with non-gamers and grandmothers to make
the instructions more clear 8. after 2 hours trying to help out, which I
really want to do, I may give up like 100’s of others.
Hi TheBobdoctor, thanks for your feedback on the video, which we do take
into account. The best way to find out more about the game is to give it a
go: here’s the link: apps.facebook.com/fraxinusgame/ As i recall, the X and
! mean deletions and additions to reads you play with compared to the
reference pattern. In making the video, we did try and include more about
the game but it all got too long. We also specifically turned the music
down then off when the game explanation starts.
The Fraxinus game community on Facebook might also help: facebook.com/
fraxinusgame Personally, i found going over the in-game tutorial again
helped me get my head around it more. On your Qs 3. You have to TRY to
match all rows (but not all); 3-6. You can leave gaps,spaces and move
colours as necessary and this all affects your matching score. 7. It was
widely tested. 8. Don’t give up! Have fun and hope it works out…
PS. I did check the links in the description. Just looking for something a
little more in depth. Thanks
Fun game.
Please explain how the scoring works. Sometimes if I delete one gene and
create a space, my score goes up;sometimes it goes down. It would help to
understand how the scoring algorithm is calculated.
Loved phylo and love this! This concept should be applied to moar problems
😀 Will point this one out to all my friends in biotech!! Is there an info
page or a free access paper which explains exactly how this project works?
I assume its manually performing MSAs but what do all the individual
“reeds” represent? All I heard was DNA samples, do they represent closely
related analogues? Keep up the brilliant work!