It’s rare to see a video game given coverage in The New York Times, much less praise. But, Foldit is no ordinary game; it’s an interactive scientific model that plays like Tetris and helps figure out how the body’s proteins work.

The goal of Foldit is to figure out how protein molecules fold into three-dimensional configurations. It’s like Tetris in the way molecules can be “wiggled”, “shaken” or “rebuilt” to create configurations, but it’s a heck of a lot harder: because protein structures are constantly changing, creating configurations is like solving “a million-sided Rubik’s Cube while it also spins at 10,000 r.p.m. And that’s for just one ‘fold,’” according to Duke Ferris, founder of GameRevolution.

The challenge is to come up with the most efficient configurations, figuring out how the proteins structure themselves to build muscle tissue and lots of other things within the body.  Players learn via a series of tutorials and are scored based on how well the protein is folded.  They can tackle certain structures in teams and can compare their score against the highest for each puzzle either individually or in a group.

Researchers at the University of Washington created the game in May 2008 in order to utilize human volunteers in a protein-mapping project rather than depend on tedious software. The non-scientist gamers got better results in a much shorter period of time, outperforming the software in 5 of 10 puzzles and creating significantly better solutions in 2 others.

The report, published here, cites 57,000 players who “contributed extensively through their feedback and gameplay.”

It’s about time gamers get their due.