Foldit

Beginner Puzzle (<150): Coronavirus

Closed since about 5 years ago

Beginner Beginner

Summary

Created: March 03, 2020
Expires: March 25, 2021 at 23:00 UTC
Max points: 100

Description

Design a protein binder against coronavirus! The starting structure shows how the coronavirus spike protein binds to a human receptor protein. The coronavirus protein (in gray) is mostly frozen, except for the orange and blue sidechains at the binding site. The binding site of coronavirus sticks to the human protein (in color), and this allows the coronavirus to infect human cells. We want to design a new protein that can bind to coronavirus more tightly than the human protein! A tight binder could block the normal coronavirus-human interaction, and might be used as an antiviral drug against coronavirus! Refold and mutate the starting structure to increase your score and improve binding against coronavirus!

START HERE:

If you are new to Foldit, here are detailed instructions to get you started:

http://fold.it/portal/node/988864

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- try all puzzles not only "Beginners" ones,

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- try it by yourself to understand what works and what doesn't,

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