Online gamers have achieved a new feat by deciphering the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus, which has been troubling scientists since years.

The target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. It is important to figure out the structure of proteins to investigate many diseases and developing drugs against them.

The gamers used Foldit, a fun-for-purpose video game developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, to unfold chains of amino acids through online tools. Scientists were surprised to see that gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed. The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release.

The exploit by gamers was published on Sunday in the journal, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. The study credited both gamers and researchers as co-authors.