David Baker Staff Lv 1
One of the first scientific publications to showcase a Foldit model turns out to be an assessor's paper in the last CASP trials! Rhiju Das who was coordinating Foldit efforts in <a href=http://www.predictioncenter.org/casp8/>CASP8</a> noticed that the paper ("<a href=http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122513697/abstract>Assessment of the protein-structure refinement category in CASP8</a>") highlights a Foldit model. Fig. 6 in this paper illustrates how a protein's 3D model submitted in CASP8 could help solve the "crystallographic phase problem" for this protein's experimental data, an important bottleneck in structural biology. The depicted model was made in the very early days of Foldit (summer of 2008) by <a href=http://fold.it/portal/user/40708>Pletsch</a> as part of the <a href=http://fold.it/portal/node/257965>Another Hour Another Point</a> team. The Foldit toolset has expanded a lot since then, so we expect more great things to happen in <a href=http://www.predictioncenter.org/casp9/>CASP9</a>!
