Hey everyone! We will be having an Office Hour next week on 1/28/2025 at 10 AM MT (https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html). It will be hosted by @horowsah and @beta_helix. We'll be discussing the reconstruction puzzle series. Looking forward to seeing y'all there!
If you can't make it at that time, feel free to post any questions about the Reconstruction puzzles or Electron Density tools here, and we'll address them during the chat!
I'm curious how we did on Puzzle 2541 (https://fold.it/puzzles/2013979) Unsolved Voltage-gated Ion Channel Cryo-EM Density.
The Density problems are more a roulette game than any serious investigation. There is too much trial-and-error involved. There should be absolute positioning and rotation functions for the structures (not tools like bands but scriptable functions) to automate the tedious process. At the very least the 'rephase' button should have the equivalent function so we can call it from within scripts.
There should be more openness about approaches and used scripts as we are all 'competing' and wasting energy, time and money often to no avail.
The silly structures that make up the super high scores in compound puzzles should be reviewed, exposed and eliminated by Foldit staff. We figured out the trick(s) as well and waste our time making silly structures that score well. They have been shared with scientists, so why is there no ban on making new 'space stations' in favor of real science ?
Don't forget to post a link to the transcript please.
I'm curious how we did on Puzzle 2541 (https://fold.it/puzzles/2013979) Unsolved Voltage-gated Ion Channel Cryo-EM Density.
Hi Jeff, thanks for your interest in the puzzle results! After analyzing the top-scoring models, we noticed that one of the three disulfide bonds was broken, leading to higher scores at the expense of structural integrity, as we know these bonds are essential for maintaining the structure. We’re working on re-releasing the puzzle with distance constraints to ensure the bonds remain intact. Stay tuned!
Did you look through the Puzzle 2541 solutions with all 3 disulfide bonds intact? How did they score compared to ones with only two disulfide bonds intact? Ideally you have all the coordinates for submitted solutions on your server. Are you not able to use these coordinates to find ones with all 3 disulfide bonds intact?