In the age of smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, information communication technologies have changed the way the world thinks, works, and functions. Digital technologies have influenced how people communicate with one another and how knowledge is shared. The dissemination of scientific knowledge has been revolutionized by the internet, enabling researchers to share their findings and data directly with followers outside the scientific community. While online sharing has facilitated scientific collaboration and aided in the distribution of scientific results, it has been far more challenging to bring the outside community into the process of scientific discovery and hypothesis testing to take advantage of crowdsourced insights. In PNAS, Andreasson et al. present a platform for iterative hypothesis generation and high-throughput characterization that enables large-scale, video game-based crowdsourcing of tens of thousands of RNA-based sensor designs. They find that bringing the wisdom of an online community into the discovery process yields unanticipated RNA device architectures along with sensors that operate near the thermodynamic optimum.
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