May Science Chat Announced

Started by inkycatz

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

More and more scientists are encouraged to put a Patent on their discoveries. This can give money to the individual, the University, the Country. It can also favor (or disfavor for marketing reasons) the production of - say - a new medicine against a disease.

What if you find a new medicine against Cancer?

Would you be Bill Gates or Tim Berners-Lee ?

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

When posting a protein with contact map (or other de novo), do you have any prior idea on which kind of design it could be? (see http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Distance_Maps)

Would it make sense to give us a picture of a possible design type in the comment of the puzzle? ("We think that it could possibly look as …").

My problem is that we player tent to design always the same types of proteins (e.g. straight parallel structures) when we see in the pictures that other design types are common.

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

Since the publication in 2010-2012, were there other Foldit successes in discovering unknown native structures?

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

Did you already succeed to synthetise any of our designs in the lab? (even an unusefull protein, but quite stable in solution)?

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

Which of your research dreams do you feel are achievable within your human live?

(to predict a medicine that works? to find an algorithm that can predict a protein without Human intervention ? to solve many other protein structures ? …)

Anfinsen_slept_here Lv 1

I am up-voting some of Bruno's questions. No, all of Bruno's questions.

A discussion of IP from the game would be great, especially if we are gonna design small-molecule lead compounds.

Have we designed any proteins that folds nicely when synthesized? How do YOU study designed proteins?

How about enlisting student labs to express designed proteins, with possible Kickstarter funding or something similar? They could then do simple characterizations, like solubility, melting temp, maybe even crystallizability.

gitwut Lv 1

Also, are there any statistics on how many players are making use of the new features (Rama, etc)?

jeff101 Lv 1

I have enjoyed playing the recent de novo puzzles (1227 1231 1234). Are these actually CASP puzzles? Are these proteins ones that Foldit players designed? Are the proteins in these de novo puzzles from some other source? Please give details.

Thanks!

frood66 Lv 1

I'm sure I'm not the only player concerned about this. Whilst it is clear that revisit puzzles may be of value to the foldit development team, it seems that these types of puzzles are now very much in the ascendency, Considering the issues with antibiotics alone, I and others find this disappointing.

The introduction of the RAMA map is useful - the remix concept sounds good and promising. But can we please have more 'real world' based puzzles?

ED may be hated by many - but at least it is a chance for us to use existing science to build upon.

Whilst I accept that this ask appears simplistic: I, for one, would like to see more 'real' puzzles.

Can we?

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

Researcher publish a structure. OK but how do you know it's the right one?? (and not a local minimum)

Is it because you can then synthesize them in the lab and find that they are stable?