Borderlands 3 gets mini-game to aid scientific microbe research

If you also want to do something useful besides shooting in Borderlands 3, you can indulge yourself with Borderlands Science. This is an in-game puzzle game that allows players to help scientists map and debug the DNA of microbes.

Borderlands Science is a mini-game accessible to Borderlands 3 players via a slot machine in the Sanctuary III starship. This component was created by Gearbox Software in collaboration with McGill University, Massively Multiplayer Online Science and The Microsetta Initiative. By playing the puzzle game, scientists are helped with their research into the DNA of microbes.

The game revolves around relatively simple-looking block puzzles based on DNA strands of microbes; this data comes from samples of human feces. Computers have already analyzed and arranged the data, but according to scientists they are not very suitable for this; they make small mistakes when mapping the data of different microbes with similar DNA. It is up to the players to correct those mistakes.

The scientists have millions of DNA sequences, each containing 150 nucleotides. Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and RNA. There are minor errors in these sequences as a result of the computer analyses. The DNA strands have been reduced to individual, colored tiles in the game. It is up to the player to line up as many tiles of the same color as possible.

After achieving a target score, the player also receives a reward that provides an advantage in Borderlands 3. But even without achieving the score, science is helped; it is not always possible to align everything perfectly, but through play the errors in the computer analysis are identified. That helps scientists to make better algorithms.