I just found out about foldit and thought I'd play around with it a bit. I've only been using it a couple of days, going through what I'm assuming is the "training" proteins. I'm learning about clashes, voids, sheets, etc.
Is there a cheatsheet of any kind to help keep everything organized? There seems to be a lot of nuances and basic things to remember. I Word doc or PDF would be useful starting out. Is there anything out there like this?
I know nothing about biology, so I'm also wondering how much I can really help out with this. Any thoughts about this?
Thanks,
Andy
Below are some bits of e-mails I sent a new player back in December. My guess is that what I wrote then is still true:
The Foldit Wiki (https://foldit.fandom.com/wiki/Foldit_Wiki) is written by Foldit players and has many tips & links for new players. If you scroll down, there is a section called "New Players". There it gives links to the Campaign levels (also called Intro or Tutorial puzzles, they are generally short puzzles that introduce you to each of Foldit's Tools) and a video by S0ckrates that shows how to quickly go through all of the Campaign levels. If you scroll down even further, there are sections with names like "Tools, tips, techniques" and "Featured articles". If you go back to the top and watch the right-hand column, there is also a section called "The Science", which gets into the biochemistry behind Foldit.
For a more official but less detailed overview of Foldit's goals and how you can contribute to science, see https://fold.it/about_foldit and https://fold.it/science
If you get stuck, you can post questions to Foldit's Global Chat, Group Chat, or Discord channel. Usually someone is around who can answer your questions, but you might have to wait a bit for them to notice and respond. Keep trying to find the answers on your own while you wait.
As you get more experience, you will get access to Vet Chat, and being in a Group lets you share solutions with your teammates, so you can sometimes play as an evolver instead of always playing solo. That can be very helpful. I think everyone who plays Foldit has a different set of tricks (both hand-folding and recipes) to use. The game is pretty complicated, so playing Foldit is a bit like blind people describing an elephant. Some feel the elephant's (protein's) tail while others feel its ears and others feel its trunk. These different viewpoints lead to different folding strategies, and some work better than others.
About 11 years ago, a handful of top players made what were called Black Belt Folding videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzgO42BPIbEDgcstndg0Z0Spl4uSXakb7). I'd imagine most of the tips they gave still apply, but some are no longer needed because of new tools and recipes. Also, the interface in the old videos differs a bit from the present interface.
There are also many YouTube videos and Twitch streams made by various Foldit players (look for Susume, S0ckrates, and LociOiling, for example). https://www.youtube.com/@UWfoldit/featured and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzgO42BPIbEA5aIpa4V19QpmvXse7n6l3 list many of them. Some Twitch streams/videos are listed at https://www.twitch.tv/search?term=foldit
I hope this helps, and welcome to Foldit!
