You can help medical science just by playing a new Borderlands mini-game

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  This terminal is your entry point to helping biomedical research through gaming.

Players can help biomedical research by playing a new color-matching mini-game introduced in Borderlands 3 this week. "Borderlands Science" basically tricks human players into solving complex genetic alignment problems that can be intuitive for humans but difficult for computer algorithms.

The mini-game is a joint effort between Borderlands maker Gearbox and scientists at McGill University, UC San Diego's Microsetta Initiative, and the Massively Multiplayer Online Science group. "The first time I met with [Gearbox founder] Randy Pitchford and [Producer] Aaron Thibault to discuss this crazy idea was 5 years ago at GDC," MMOS founder Attila Szantner said in a blog post. "Since then we have been working together with the Gearbox team to realize this project."

How does it work?

The process starts with DNA sequences from some of the trillions of microbes in the human gut. Researchers want to arrange those sequences to figure out which of these microbes are genetically similar to each other. That can help indicate which genetic lines of microbes are associated with certain diseases.

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