Online gamers at the University of Washington have deciphered the enzyme of an AIDS-like virus, beating trained research scientists who have been trying to design a model for over a decade.

The journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology published on Sunday the discovery in which the both the gamers and researchers were recognized as co-authors.

UW initially developed in 2008 the Foldit video game, which divides conestants into competing groups in a bid to discover chains of amino acids using online tools. The chains are used to build up blocks of protein.

The gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks. They used their spatial abilities and intuition to create a 3-D image from a flat image of the molecule, which eventually allowed UW biochemists to tweak it into a usable model or targeting drugs.

Scientists needed a reliable 3D image of the virus to pinpoint the most effective location for antiretroviral drugs to attack.

By cracking the enzyme, the gamers were able to provide new insight for the design of antiretroviral drugs to be used against the human immunodeficiency virus.

Firas Khatib of UW's biochemistry lab said they tapped online gamers to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods failed.

"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems," Khatib said.

Seth Cooper, one of the Foldit creators, said the gamers succeeded because of their spatial reasoning skills, where computers lag.

"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper showed that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before," Cooper told AFP.

With this development, UW professors want to develop Foldit as a teaching tool in science classes and to sharpen skills that could be applied to other areas of knowledge.

The result shows that gaming is more than a useless pastime for youth.