New Foldit paper published today in Nature Biotechnology!

Started by beta_helix

Rav3n_pl Lv 1

who is this "advanced player" refereed in article? He was picking best solutions (ie 200 out of 100`000) :)

spvincent Lv 1

In the SI I see the names of several players from the early days of Foldit who are no longer actively participating. I hope where possible they can be contacted so that they can see their contribution recognized: some may even be encouraged to return as a result.

CEiben Lv 1

I was the advanced Foldit player referenced in the paper as well as a first author on the paper. I primarily used the standalone version of Foldit when working on and evaluating structures and thus didn't have much presence in game. We are continually impressed with the structures produced by players, and it was a pleasure to review and test them in lab. We are busily preparing more enzyme design puzzles, but this time with the intent of designing enzymes to aid in carbon fixation (aka taking CO2 out of the atmosphere).

beta_helix Staff Lv 1

We will try to contact g_s & aap to let them know about their accomplishments!

(I believe that everyone else is still active)

Thanks for the great suggestion!

infjamc Lv 1

What exactly did my teammates and I do in Puzzle 366 (Back Me Up 1)? I'm asking because pulling up my team's top-scoring evolver solution revealed that the helix contains too many aromatic side chains– how is that not an artifact of the score function?

spvincent Lv 1

Pleased to see the work on CO2 fixation continuing: it would be really nice if the next generation have a world fit to live in.

CEiben Lv 1

For Puzzle 366 (Back Me Up 1), we put more significance on the kind of backbone structures produced by players than the specific amino acid sequences. The poly-aromatic residues were indeed an artifact of the score function, but it was working as expected on the backbone atoms. We took the player designed backbones and built libraries with varied side chains around them to test in lab, ultimately yielding increases in activity.