Video games can be useful!

Scientists created a game called Foldit where players can try different ways of folding proteins into three-dimensional shapes in hopes of actually finding the real shapes of molecules.  Scientists have been trying to figure out the shape of a protein that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys for 15 years, and using foldit some game players found it in ten days!

Here's the story and the journal article announcing the discovery.

Here's a link to Foldit - you can play it yourself!