AI and EVE Online Community Improve Cell and Protein Mapping in the Human Body

August 20th 2018 – Reykjavik, Iceland – Researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Massive Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) worked with CCP Games using their massively multiplayer online game set in space, EVE Online to gain a more granular understanding of patterns of proteins arranged within the body's cells. Built on a map that shows hundreds of thousands of microscopic images of human cells, EVE Online players worked alongside an artificial intelligence to accomplish this goal. In a study to be published in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology, the researchers found that players, or "citizen scientists" as KTH and MMOS now call them, helped boost the artificial intelligence system used for predicting protein localization on a subcellular level. The combination of crowdsourcing and AI led to improved classification of subcellular protein patterns and the first-time identification of ten new members of the family of cellular structures known as "Rods & Rings," according to Emma Lundberg, a researcher from KTH who leads the Cell Atlas, part of the Human Protein Atlas, at the Science for Life joint research center. She is also the first ever scientist who was put into a videogame as an agent NPC (non-playable character) to direct the project in-game as Professor Lundberg.