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Beginner Puzzle: Coronavirus

Closed since 11 months ago

Beginner

Summary

Created
March 20, 2025
Expires
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! This is a Beginner puzzle for new players that have joined Foldit in the last 6 months.

Top groups

  1. Avatar for Ch 2 11. Ch 2 1 pt. 11,753
  2. Avatar for ObieFold 12. ObieFold 1 pt. 11,753
  1. Avatar for Helennnnnnnnn 171. Helennnnnnnnn Lv 1 11 pts. 12,003
  2. Avatar for Fisherma 172. Fisherma Lv 1 11 pts. 12,001
  3. Avatar for ray_7624 173. ray_7624 Lv 1 11 pts. 12,000
  4. Avatar for linalool 174. linalool Lv 1 11 pts. 11,996
  5. Avatar for mattdemp 175. mattdemp Lv 1 11 pts. 11,990
  6. Avatar for avalambb5 176. avalambb5 Lv 1 11 pts. 11,988
  7. Avatar for equsem 177. equsem Lv 1 10 pts. 11,987
  8. Avatar for aminobuilder 178. aminobuilder Lv 1 10 pts. 11,986
  9. Avatar for marilou_janiola 179. marilou_janiola Lv 1 10 pts. 11,972
  10. Avatar for cawleyjt 180. cawleyjt Lv 1 10 pts. 11,971

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