Foldit Puzzles

849b: De-novo Freestyle 34: Hand-folding Round

This is a corrected repost of Puzzle 849a. 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.

851: Trimer Interface Redesign: Round 1

This is a symmetric trimer that was originally designed by Museka in Puzzle 742. We'd like you to try to redesign the interface between the subunits to include a couple hydrogen bonds and blue, polar contacts amongst all the orange hydrophobic residues that are in the starting structure. Baker Lab scientists have cloned and expressed this protein in E. coli, but instead of aligning into well-ordered trimers, it appears to form disordered aggregates in solution. We think that this can be corrected by reducing the hydrophobic surface of the monomer subunit. Because this is uncharted territory for our score function, we're starting out with a pretty low tolerance for buried polar residues. We plan to post several of these puzzles in series—each with increased tolerance for a polar interface.

848: Revisiting Puzzle 97: Pig

This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. This saposin protein from pig serves as an activator for lipid-desolving enzymes. 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.

847: 65 Residue Dimer Design

This is a symmetric dimer design puzzle with 65 residues. Remember, a symmetric protein relies not only on how well-folded each chain is, but also on how well they interface together. 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!

846: Ebola hotspot discovery

We would like to design a peptide to treat the Ebola virus. This puzzle is a hotspot discovery puzzle, meaning that we would like you to find a good place in which to fit a small peptide "stub" in a particular hydrophobic binding pocket on the Ebola virus glycoprotein. We will then use the best stub placements as starting points for designing a larger molecule. Blocking this pocket on the Ebola glycoprotein will prevent the glycoprotein from binding to proteins on host cells, and should thereby block viral entry into host cells. We're starting you with a tryptophan, but you can mutate the stub residues to whatever you like. Remember that you can share interesting designs with the scientists, regardless your score!

845: Revisiting Puzzle 786

This is a repost of a De-novo Freestyle puzzle we ran in October of 2013. Your solutions for this puzzle will help us evaluate some features of the recent Foldit updates. Players will NOT be able to load in solutions from Puzzle 786.

844: 65 Residue Monomer Design: Round 2

This is a follow-up to Puzzle 837. We're still calibrating some parameters of the newest score function, and this puzzle has been slightly modified to encourage better core packing. You may notice that Alanine residues do not score as well as in the previous puzzle. Load in your solutions from Puzzle 837 and mutate the core residues to improve your score!

843: CASP ROLL Target R0046: Server Models

This is the same CASP ROLL target as in Puzzle 840, now with server predictions! Resetting the puzzle will cycle through 3 different server predictions and they are available in the Alignment Tool so you can use partial threading between them. Please try out each start, as the topology that initially scores poorly may actually be the closest to the native and will eventually score better than everything else.

842: Revisiting Puzzle 96: Collagen

This is a throwback puzzle to the early days of Foldit. Collagen is one of the most abundant proteins in mammals. It is the main protein of connective tissue in animals. 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.

841: De-novo Freestyle 33: Round 2

This is Round 2 for Puzzle 838. You will be able to load in your manual saves from 838 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 838, you can go back to 838, manually save it, and the solution should appear in your manual saves for this puzzle.