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Beginner Puzzle: Coronavirus

Closed since 10 months ago

Beginner

Summary

Created
April 24, 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 CHEM1210/1020 TTU 11. CHEM1210/1020 TTU 1 pt. 11,801
  2. Avatar for METU-BIN 12. METU-BIN 1 pt. 11,753
  3. Avatar for GENE 433 13. GENE 433 1 pt. 11,753
  4. Avatar for Biotechnology SFEDU 14. Biotechnology SFEDU 1 pt. 11,753
  5. Avatar for Ch 2 15. Ch 2 1 pt. 11,753
  1. Avatar for sarawin.ong 11. sarawin.ong Lv 1 88 pts. 13,096
  2. Avatar for therussiandraco 12. therussiandraco Lv 1 87 pts. 13,089
  3. Avatar for ustb202242548 13. ustb202242548 Lv 1 86 pts. 13,064
  4. Avatar for USTB202242520 14. USTB202242520 Lv 1 85 pts. 13,063
  5. Avatar for ARs135 15. ARs135 Lv 1 84 pts. 13,052
  6. Avatar for LHOr 16. LHOr Lv 1 83 pts. 13,052
  7. Avatar for zprhpl 17. zprhpl Lv 1 82 pts. 13,038
  8. Avatar for Ken 18. Ken Lv 1 81 pts. 13,033
  9. Avatar for froguly 19. froguly Lv 1 79 pts. 13,025
  10. Avatar for USTB202242540 20. USTB202242540 Lv 1 78 pts. 13,018

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