Hi folks,
As a non-chemist, I'm trying to fold my brain around proteins, and I was wondering about two aspects of the scoring.
First, hydropathy. Leucine is more hydrophobic than alanine. In FoldIt, is it generally more harmful to your score to have leucine exposed than to have alanine sticking out?
Second, polarity. Is this factored into FoldIt? Do polar opposites attract?
Any light you can shed on this for me would be greatly appreciated!
– JohnDopp
in the wiki about amino acids, there would be a start. h. and p. are listed their.
"In FoldIt, is it generally more harmful to your score to have leucine exposed than to have alanine sticking out?"
Hard to say. The excact directions play a big role. The sidechains have not the same effect in all directions, too. The bigger the sidechain, the bigger the effect.
There is unfortunately not much going on in the way of information exchange.
Yes, polarity is factored into Foldit. But it is not a very strong force.
If there's lack of information exchange about this particular topic, it's because we know little enough about the specifics either. It is really up to the players to evolve good strategies on many of these little questions.
Thank you for the info! I'll keep exploring. =)
I not only talked about team-players, but also the players betwen themselves. (Perhaps inside the big teams, but not outside)
There are wiki entries that are very old etc. and no discussions going on about specific topics.
I'll try to ecourage this in the german wiki (and also make a beginner's portal), but the main body of players is english based, either as their native tongue or as a lingua franca.
It might be helpful to read a little about enthalpy and entropy (thermodynamics) in protein folding.
2 years old thread… ;]