In 2019, Eterna launched the ribosome engineering project OpenRibosome in collaboration with the Jewett Lab at Northwestern University to enhance the folding of modified Escherichia coli ribosomes on the iSAT cell-free ribosome construction platform. The protein production of twenty 16S and twenty 23S sequences designed by players are being evaluated in a series of four feedback-based iterations. The ribosomes are being reengineered as molecular machines capable of synthesizing unique polymers. Accomplishments By August 2011, approximately 26,000 players had contributed RNA sequence designs and over 306 designs have been synthesized for in vitro testing. In January 2014, the results from Eterna have been published in the PNAS journal, with "Eterna participants" listed as co-authors in the paper. The Eterna gamers beat the supercomputer-powered algorithms in solving all the 100 RNA secondary structure design challenges, while the best score of the six algorithms used is 54. By manipulating the chemical sequences of RNA the gamers created stable forms of desired shapes. The strategies designed by the players identified specific structural features that make inverse RNA folding difficult. The Eterna researchers hope that by integrating their strategies into algorithms, improvement in automated RNA secondary structure design can be achieved. The results of the challenges were published in the Journal of Molecular Biology in February 2016. This was the first paper based on dominant writing contributions—and co-lead authorship—by non-expert citizen scientists recruited through a video game. Eterna citizen scientists discovered a discrepancy in SHAPE and DMS chemical probing when reading strings of 7+ adenosine, and subsequently published their findings in Biochemistry. It is the first paper written exclusively by citizen scientists to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. See also Citizen science Foldit Game with a purpose List of crowdsourcing projects Serious game References External links Eterna Wiki Citizen science 2010 video games Browser games Human-based computation games Puzzle video games RNA Carnegie Mellon University Stanford University Video games developed in the United States