In 2020, we released Borderlands Science, a Tetris-like puzzle that help us improving human microbiome data analysis study. With 4 million participants and an improved classification of one million microbial sequences, the project was highly successful. Yet, Borderlands Science is limited to one single (alignment) task that is becoming less critical for modern sequencing technologies used in human health microbiome studies. Here, we propose to address this challenge and develop a citizen science mini game that has the potential to engage millions of online gamers into the curation of modern metagenomic data, and thus accelerate human microbiome studies. Yet, to justify the integration of this new citizen science approach into a major commercial game, we must guarantee that the scientific task can be embedded in a casual mini game accessible to a broad public, and the data collected through that mini game can be used to improve metagenomic curation. This project aims to assemble the preliminary data required to move to the production phase of Borderlands Science.
User: Sébastien Caisse (Gearbox Studio Québec)