Hi is there a way to enable the display of specific functional groups and chemical bonds within the on screen models, just as is possible in JMOL?
It seems without this other than being somewhat amusing to play, the game itself is of limited educational value.
Of course, I could just be missing how to enable these?
If you are saying bonds on loops vs. sheets. vs. etc., you can get those under the view menu by turning on the advanced GUI under general options (if memory serves). Other than that, no. And Foldit isn't really meant as an educational tool, but a game for players to make designs (Rosetta + human interaction). However, you can always suggest new features here: http://fold.it/portal/feedback All feedback is appreciated.
In Foldit's Original Interface, you can pull up a View menu. In this menu are options to show hydrogen bonds within sheet, helix, and loop regions, hydrogen bonds involving sidechains, and bonds to non-protein parts. Most of these bonds appear as white and blue candy canes, but disulfide bonds show as yellow and blue candy canes. You can also render the protein with or without sidechains and with or without hydrogens using stick, sphere, cartoon, trace line, or line methods. You can color by CPK (N's are blue, O's are red, C's are black, S's are yellow, and H's are white), which helps identify functional groups. You can color by hydrophilic (blue) vs hydrophobic (orange). You can view the protein's isosurface. With spheres, you can make a space-filling model. Some puzzles even include electron density data, which players try to fill in as best they can with the protein.
For a many views of solutions to previous puzzles, see http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Puzzle_Results
I hope this helps.