Foldit Puzzles

865: Revisiting Puzzle 113: White Birch

This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This protein is an allergen produced by the white birch tree. We are revisiting old Foldit puzzles so we can see how useful the recent additions to the game have been. Players will NOT be able to load in any previous solutions for these puzzles.

864: De-novo Freestyle 36: Low Power

In this de-novo freestyle puzzle, the "High Wiggle Power" option has been disabled. After this puzzle expires, the puzzle will be reposted for a brief period with the High Wiggle Power option enabled, and you will be able to load in solutions from this puzzle. The results from these puzzles will help us determine how useful the wiggle power options may be for structure prediction in Foldit. The secondary structure predictions are provided on the starting model, with more details posted in the puzzle comments.

863: Abeta Peptide

This short peptide is a fragment of a larger protein found in the membrane of neurons. The Abeta peptide is a product of natural proteolysis reactions in brain tissue, but accumulation of this peptide has been linked to Alzheimer's disease. Abeta is very flexible in solution and is known to sample both alpha-helix and beta-sheet conformations, though little else is known about the full range of structures adopted by Abeta. Help us find the highest-scoring structure(s) of this protein!

862: Revisiting Puzzle 112: Bovine

This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This particular protein is known as ubiquitin, and plays a prominent role in the protein degradation pathway. We are revisiting old Foldit puzzles so we can see how useful the recent additions to the game have been. Players will NOT be able to load in any previous solutions for these puzzles.

861: De-novo Freestyle 35: Round 2

This is Round 2 for Puzzle 857. You will be able to load in your manual saves from 857 and use them as a starting point here. This puzzle has been opened up to allow for sharing and the use of all scripts. NOTE: If you did not manually save a solution in puzzle 857, you can go back to 857, manually save it, and the solution should appear in your manual saves for this puzzle.

860: 72 Residue Monomer Design

This is a single-chain design puzzle with 72 residues. This puzzle is similar to Puzzle 854, with a few key changes: the Core Exists filter requirement has been relaxed and may allow more "adventuresome" designs; in addition, the Fragment Filter has been omitted, although it may return in a followup refinement round. As usual, the Residue IE Score monitors that all PHE, TYR, and TRP residues are scoring well. The Baker Lab will run folding simulations 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 3 designs that you want us to look at, even if they are not the best-scoring solutions!

859: Attack of the glycines!

Glycine is an unusual amino acid. Of the 20 standard amino acids, it is the only one that does not have handedness: all others cannot be superimposed on their mirror images, but glycine can. This means that glycine is just as happy forming one structure -- (an ordinary, right-handed alpha-helix, for example) as it is forming the mirror image structure (a backwards, left-handed helix, for example). This extra flexibility and the competition with other, energetically equivalent states makes it hard to lock glycine in one conformation, meaning that glycine tends to disrupt secondary structure.

858: Revisiting Puzzle 111: Mouse

This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This protein is found in the nucleus of mice cells and functions in the DNA binding process. We are revisiting old Foldit puzzles so we can see how useful the recent additions to the game have been. Players will NOT be able to load in any previous solutions for these puzzles.

857: De-novo Freestyle 35: Hand-folding Round

We are giving you another currently unsolved protein as an extended chain. This round only GUI scripts are allowed and sharing has been disabled. After this puzzle expires, the puzzle will be re-posted and LUA scripts and sharing will be allowed. You'll be able to load in your solutions from this puzzle and use scripting and sharing. The secondary structure predictions are provided on the starting model, with more details posted in the puzzle comments.

854: 75 Residue Monomer Design

This is a single-chain design puzzle with 75 residues. There are 3 filters enabled on this puzzle: the Residue IE Score monitors that all PHE, TYR, and TRP residues are scoring well; the Core Existence filter checks that at least 30% of the residues are buried in the core of your design; and the Fragment Filter scans for parts of your design that are unlikely to fold up naturally. The Baker Lab will run folding simulations 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 3 designs that you want us to look at, even if they are not the best-scoring solutions!