Players of Guerilla Tea’s Play to Cure: Genes In Space have completed six months worth of research in the month since the game was released.
The amount of actual data is quite astonishing. According to Cancer Research UK:
If this amount of DNA – tightly-coiled strings of genetic information – was unravelled it would stretch across 40 miles (65 km). Incredibly, this is a distance equivalent to the length of more than 540 football fields, or about 80 times the height of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Each time gamers play the game they analyse the DNA of one chromosome – one classification – some 2yds/0.002km of DNA. 1.5 million classifications results in the analysis of a length of DNA enough to stretch across:
- more than 540 football pitches
- more than 70 times the height of Scaffel Pike
- around 50 times the height of Ben Nevis
- more than 55 times the height of Snowdon
- around 170 times the height of Empire State building
- it would stretch around the London Eye around 155 times
- It would stretch across the English channel two times
- around 80 times the length of the tallest building
Professor Carlos Caldas, senior group leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, said:
We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who is giving their spare moments to help us analyse genetic data. We’re working hard to develop better drugs, improve the diagnosis of cancer patients and understand why some treatments work and others won’t – to spare unpleasant side effects. Computers can’t analyse our research data with 100 per cent accuracy – we need the human eye for greater precision. It can take us years to decode the huge amounts of data generated by research. But with everyone’s help the boost to our work could be enormous.
Play To Cure: Genes In Space is available NOW for iOS (iPhones, iPad, iPod Touch) and Android (Smartphones and tablets). It is free to download and play. It will help speed up the search for cancer cures and you can save lives.
Download the iOS game here.
Download the Android version here.
