A Facebook game has been created that enables puzzle fans to help tackle a disease threatening the UK’s ash trees.
The Fraxinus app, asks players to match sequences of coloured leaves, which represent strings of genetic information.
It is hoped that by harnessing the power of social media a scientific solution will be found to protect ash trees from the Chalara fraxinea fungus.
"Each play of the game will contribute a small but useful analysis," said Dr Dan MacLean from The Sainsbury Laboratory who conceived the idea.
"The more people who play it, the more accurate the results will be for us and the quicker we can generate the information needed to help our woodlands recover from the current epidemic."
People are better at this type of matching task than computers alone, because the human eye can recognise patterns that computers miss.
Many of the UK's 80m ash trees are threatened by ash dieback.
Scientists believe some trees may have natural immunity to Chalara and could be used to grow resistant forests.
The Chalara and ash tree genomes consist of about 60 million and one billion letters respectively.
All the puzzles in the game feature likely trouble spots that the scientists would like investigated to help break down the data. The size of the task makes the contribution of non-specialists invaluable.
"Computer power alone is not the answer to making the most of our data,”" said Dr MacLean.
"An awful lot of human expertise and knowledge has to be poured on top and with this game we can start to include the non-specialist."
Closely matched sequences earn high scores and allow players to claim patterns.
If another player uses the same pattern to achieve a higher score, they can steal the pattern and claim it for their own. Each pattern theft helps make the resulting data more accurate.
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