Foldit Puzzles
Play puzzles to help scientific research and compete with other players. New puzzles are posted every week.
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This puzzle challenges players to design a single-chain protein with 65-75 residues. The starting structure has 65 residues, but more can be added at a cost of 32 points per residue. See the puzzle comments for filter details. The Baker Lab will run folding predictions on your solutions for this puzzle, and those that perform well will be synthesized in the lab. Remember, you can use the Upload for Scientists button for up to 5 designs that you want us to look at, even if they are not the best-scoring solutions!
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Closed
since
almost 8 years
ago
This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This protein binds fatty acids in intestinal cells. We are revisiting old Foldit puzzles so we can see how useful the recent additions to the game have been.
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Closed
since
almost 8 years
ago
The Siegel Lab has identified a new protein scaffold that could potentially serve to degrade aflatoxin! This puzzle uses a different starting structure than Rounds 1-6 of the Aflatoxin Challenge, but the goal is the same: Redesign the active site to bind aflatoxin! Note that loop residues 62-69 in the starting structure clash with the aflatoxin molecule. Although residue insertions are not allowed in this puzzle, players may remove residues from this loop. Parts of the scaffold protein have been trimmed to reduce the size of the puzzle, and we've upweighted ligand interactions by a factor of five. We'd like to see if Foldit players can design proteins that make more interactions with the ligand! See the blog for more details.
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Design a protein that could be used as a vaccine for malaria! Malaria is a deadly disease caused by the parasite P. falciparum, which makes circumsporozoite protein (CSP) to grow and infect human cells. The human immune system can combat malaria by producing antibodies that recognize CSP on the surface of the parasite. However, the immune system is not always successful, in part because CSP is a highly flexible protein that can exchange between different structures. It was recently discovered that human antibodies can protect against malarial infection if they bind to a CSP loop in a particular "vulnerable" structure; but antibodies targeting alternative structures of CSP do not halt infection. If we can design a protein that contains the CSP loop in the vulnerable conformation, the protein could be used as a vaccine to prepare the immune system against malaria (by raising antibodies that bind the vulnerable CSP structure)!
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Note: This puzzle replaces Puzzle 1507, which was posted with an erroneous puzzle setup. Unfortunately, players will not be able to load solutions from the original Puzzle 1507.
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Closed
since
almost 8 years
ago
This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This small, intracellular domain binds to the CD2 T cell receptor (TCR), and plays a critical role in T cell activation during the immune response. We are revisiting old Foldit puzzles so we can see how useful the recent additions to the game have been.
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This puzzle challenges players to design a single-chain protein with 85-105 residues. The starting structure has 85 residues, but more can be added at a cost of 32 points per residue. See the puzzle comments for filter details. The Baker Lab will run folding predictions on your solutions for this puzzle, and those that perform well will be synthesized in the lab. Remember, you can use the Upload for Scientists button for up to 5 designs that you want us to look at, even if they are not the best-scoring solutions!
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This is a ligand docking puzzle. Instead of changing the protein, we'd like you to focus on finding the best position and interactions for the ligand. (The residue in the middle of the alpha helices, currently making a number of clashes.)
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Closed
since
almost 8 years
ago
The aflatoxin puzzles are back! This puzzle is very similar to Puzzle 1455: Aflatoxin Challenge: Round 4, but parts of the scaffold protein have been trimmed to reduce the size of the puzzle, and we've upweighted ligand interactions by a factor of five. We'd like to see if Foldit players can design proteins that make more interactions with the ligand! See the blog for more details. Unfortunately, due to the scaffold trimming and the recent Foldit update, players will not be able to load solutions from Puzzle 1455.
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This puzzle challenges players to design a single-chain protein with 75-90 residues. The starting structure has 75 residues, but more can be added at a cost of 32 points per residue. See the puzzle comments for filter details. The Baker Lab will run folding predictions on your solutions for this puzzle, and those that perform well will be synthesized in the lab. Remember, you can use the Upload for Scientists button for up to 5 designs that you want us to look at, even if they are not the best-scoring solutions!