GETTING VIR-ED Pitt researchers develop game about viruses; app store process proves labor intensive

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It’s an arduous task to understand how the herpes virus spreads throughout the body. That’s true whether you’re a 10year-old student or an engineer with a degree or two.

“You don’t ever get to visualize and actually see how the molecules interact in the cells,” said Jason Shoemaker, an assistant professor in chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s hard to visualize, even for engineers … we design systems and sometimes have a hard time picturing how things exist in a biological system.”

In February, Mr. Shoemaker and the students in his research group called the Shoemaker Immunosystems Lab, began a nearly six-month journey to make these biological mechanisms easier to understand through gamification.

Over the summer, Mr. Shoemaker, his graduate research assistant Robert Gregg and 17 other students introduced a virtual reality game called “Vir-ed” to the Google Play store.

An infectious game

Vir-ed (pronounced like “wired”) is an edtech game developed with two story modes and a slew of mini-games meant to teachhow a virus hijacks a cell.

The game was developed using the Unity platform, which was specifically created to make high quality 3D games.

In the first story mode, players float through the bloodstream and watchhow a virus invades a cell to hijack it, creating viral proteins that eventually will become more viruses.All the while, text appears on the screen in the 3-D space as a voiceover explains what is occurring.

Things flip around in the second story mode, when the player moves to the cell’s perspective to see its available defense mechanisms.

“During the story, you’re playing all these types of mini games that sort of teach you about different aspects of virology,” Mr. Gregg said.

“For example, there’s one game that’s teaching you about transcription of your DNA. It tells you about the four different nucleotides — A,T,C and G — and you’re essentially playing a Simon sort of game where you’re trying to match them up to the sequence you’re given to make a viral protein or a protein that’s trying to stop the virus.”

Once the story modes have been completed, all the mini games are unlocked and players can earn trophies through various achievements based on speed, time it takes to finish a round or howmany pointsscored.