Gamers can now join in the fight against ash dieback, a killer fungal disease currently threatening the UK’s woodlands.
Fraxinus is a Facebook puzzle game where users solve onscreen combinations. This will help scientists decode genetic structures to learn more about the fungus and stop it in its tracks.
Ash dieback is caused by a fungus called Chalara fraxinea. If it becomes established the devastation could be as series as the Dutch elm disease outbreak of the 1970s that saw millions of trees destroyed.
Rapid Response
The new video game is part of a rapid crowdsourcing response funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
By reaching out to the public through crowdsourcing and gaming, scientists hope to speed up the response to the disease. Scientific research can move at a slow pace, which is often inadequate during emergency situations.
Game On
Players match and rearrange patterns of colored leaf shapes which represent “nucleotides” – the letters that make up a genome sequence. They are far better at this than computers as the human eye can recognise patterns the machines may miss.
“Computer power alone is not the answer to making the most of our data,” said Dr MacLean from The Sainsbury Laboratory who conceived the idea.
“An awful lot of human expertise and knowledge has to be poured on top and with this game we can start to include the non-specialist.”
Critical
The game was created by gaming company Team Cooper and it has come at a critical time. The UK government and the Forestry Commission believe that between 90 and 99 per cent of the country’s 90 million ash trees will be destroyed by the fungus.
“The clues generated by members of the public could help us discover the information needed to breed from naturally-resistant individual trees to re-establish our woodlands,” said Professor Allan Downie from the John Innes Centre.
For more information about Fraxinus watch this video courtesy of the BBSRC.