Don't know if this is possible or not, but I would like to have a permanent protein available to play with so I can see what a script does before I need it on a real puzzle. And to work on my hand skills with. Something that's not too big but is representative. Thanks!
I think it would be great to have one or a few permanent proteins as a test bed for players. This would give us something to regression test script updates against and also help us compare new changes in devprev to what we had before.
Also voting for this since i often need some puzzles for testing my recipes.
But aren't there the [Beta] puzzles in the dev preview which are permanent already?
I think you can work on Expired Puzzles and see how different things affect their scores. Are proteins in Expired Puzzles permanent enough?
You could also try one of the Contests (http://fold.it/portal/contest) or make a Contest of your own (http://fold.it/portal/node/add/contest). Some Contests won't expire for several years.
Contests, expired puzzles, or the beta puzzles can work for this purpose (though the beta puzzles wont let you compare devprev and main).
We don't want to clog up the main game's interface with extra test puzzles. I think expired puzzles are your best bet. We may add a feature which will let you download old puzzles, which would help with this.
For now you can test on the Contests, these are permanent puzzles.