On the surface Foldit doesn't seem to be any different from any video game. It has cute graphics and a peppy sound. Players have to figure out a puzzle before moving on to another level. However Foldit isn't just some puzzle game, it actually masquerades as a scientific tool that helps fight real life problems, namely viruses.

Foldit, is a free to play downloadable game that turns gamers into crusading scientists attempting to solve some of the most complex and important puzzles in human history, finding a cure for lethal diseases. Over 200,000 players have attempted Foldit and so far the results have been surprising. Earlier this month, Foldit players have been able to solve a puzzle about proteins that could further the research into AIDS. The results were actually co-published in the journal Nature.

Adrien Treuille, the Carnegie Mellon computer scientist that created Foldit and another online scientific game, EteRNA aims to harness the skills of computer gamers into a more useful endeavor.

"One of our goals when we made Foldit is to make proteins toy-like, which is actually a technical term from game design," Treuille said in a recent interview at the PopTech conference. "It should be something you want to play with, like a Lego or a Tinkertoy.

"Proteins are these esoteric things that most people don't know very much about, but through computer graphics and interaction we were able to make them something you can play with and wiggle and pull -- and make them physically real for people. And I think that realness -- that toy-like aspect of proteins -- is what made it ultimately comprehensible to our players, and allowed them to solve problems that elude computer programs."

And why is finding solving proteins so integral to scientific research? If scientists can understand the shapes of proteins they can build better ones that can help with disease prevention and treatment.

Dr. Seth Cooper who worked on the Foldit project believes that while scientists have outsourced some puzzle solving to computers, gamers add something that computers can't do.

"The computer doesn't really see these things in the same way that people do," says Dr. Cooper. The computer moves shapes logically and mathematically, following complex algorithms. It solves a protein up to a certain point, then it consider the job done.

"But really," Dr. Cooper explains, "if it made a sort of more drastic move, it could have found something better. It's something we've actually seen, where what people are able to do is actually make the structure of the protein worse in the short term, but in the long term, make the protein fold up much better than where they started. So people have this longer-term ability of intuition and ability to stick to their ideas of what would make the protein fold up better."

Bringing science and gaming together has been very beneficial for scientists. Gamers have the intuition and free time to spare on such puzzles and in turn frees up scientists to focus on other tasks. Now if you're being nagged by your mother to go outside and away from your gaming console, you can always tell her that you're curing cancer.