In 2011, Foldit players needed only 10 days to produce an accurate 3-D model of the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, a protease whose structure had stumped scientists for 15 years.

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Scientists had attempted to model a 3D structure of a protein associated with the HIV virus for 15 years and failed.

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But studying the structure of the antibody and the protein on the flu virus that it targets could make it that much more likely for a universal vaccine to be developed.

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One team, for instance, inserted the virus into a program running a Mandelbrot set, a complex, mathematics-based structure named after the father of fractal geometry.

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