Here we have something that brings out the fun part of HBC - a flash-based puzzle game, Phylo, developed by McGill Centre for Bioinformatics. This short video explains pretty much what the game is about and how does it help biology scientists:
Remember when I mentioned how the time spent playing Solitaire could be used in a more productive way? This is what I meant - this type of interaction is called a human-based computation game, or game with a purpose. Basically, by playing a video game, you generate data. The nucleotide sequences generated by Phylo are obtained from actual sequence data from the UCSC Genome Browser. Your score (the data) is then being compared with the current computer-generated one, and if you happen to score higher, your data is being re-introduced into the global alignment as optimization!
To me, the game looks sort of like Dr. Mario, which I have played extensively as a child. Unlike Dr. Mario, however, the data is real, and because quite a lot of diseases are caused by inefficiencies of the genetic make up - by contributing your score you could possibly (through a medium) help save real lives!
You can play Phylo here - think about it next time you boot up Solitaire. :)
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