Foldit Puzzles
Play puzzles to help scientific research and compete with other players. New puzzles are posted every week.
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Design an anti-inflammatory protein for COVID-19! We'd like players to keep focusing on making closely-packed interfaces with no extra Buried Unsats. This puzzle prohibits SER and THR in helices, which may make it harder to satisfy BUNS, but should help the helices to fold correctly. Remember, if your designed protein creates Buried Unsats, then it will be less likely to fold and bind to the target. (Note that this target protein includes 15 buried unsats that players may be unable to fix.) See the blog for more details about buried unsats, and for helpful tips to make a successful protein binder! Players will be unable to load solutions from previous puzzles.
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Design a symmetric protein trimer, with 3 identical chains that assemble together! The H-bond Network Objective encourages players to build buried, satisfied H-bond networks at the interface between symmetric chains. H-bond networks are a great way to introduce polar residues at the interface, but it's important that all of the bondable atoms make hydrogen bonds! We've made a subtle change to the scoring of H-bonds that should help to improve H-bond geometry for SER, THR, and TYR sidechains. This puzzle uses the Buried Unsats Objective, with a large penalty for buried polar atoms that can't make H-bonds. In this puzzle, there are no limits on the Complex Core, but we've included the Complex Core objective so players can see the core residues that can be incorporated into H-bond Networks.
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CASP14 has released this refinement target with starting model's GDT_HA=59. This means that about half of the starting structure matches the native structure. Look for better scoring folds to find the true native structure!
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Design a binder against coronavirus! We'd like players to keep focusing on making closely packed interfaces with no extra BUNS. This puzzle prohibits SER and THR in helices, which may make it harder to satisfy BUNS, but should help the helices to fold correctly. Remember, if your designed protein creates Buried Unsats, then it will be less likely to fold and bind to the coronavirus target. (Note that this target protein includes 8 buried unsats that players may be unable to fix.) See the blog for more details about buried unsats, and for helpful tips to make a successful protein binder! Players may not load solutions from previous puzzles.
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Design a symmetric protein trimer, with 3 identical chains that assemble together! This puzzle has no H-Bond Network objective, but there is "Core Limit: Complex" objective meant to limit the size of the interface between symmetric chains. An interface that is too large, with too many orange hydrophobics, can prevent the individual subunits from folding properly. The "Core Limit: Complex" objective will incur penalties if there are too many buried residues in the total assembly. This puzzle uses the Buried Unsats Objective, with a large penalty for buried polar atoms that can't make H-bonds. See the puzzle comments for more Objective details.
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THIS IS A MULTISTART PUZZLE - Click "RESET PUZZLE" to cycle through both starting structures. CASP14 has released another refinement target with 2 different starting structures. They did not reveal the accuracy of either starting model, but we do know that they are both incorrect. Try to explore far enough away from both starting structures, as the highest-scoring folds might be far away from both starts!
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Design an anti-inflammatory protein for COVID-19! We'd like players to keep focusing on making closely-packed interfaces with no extra Buried Unsats. This puzzle prohibits SER and THR in helices, which may make it harder to satisfy BUNS, but should help the helices to fold correctly. Remember, if your designed protein creates Buried Unsats, then it will be less likely to fold and bind to the target. (Note that this target protein includes 15 buried unsats that players may be unable to fix.) See the blog for more details about buried unsats, and for helpful tips to make a successful protein binder! Players will be unable to load solutions from previous puzzles.
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Design a symmetric protein trimer, with 3 identical chains that assemble together! This puzzle has no H-Bond Network objective, but there is "Core Limit: Complex" objective meant to limit the size of the interface between symmetric chains. An interface that is too large, with too many orange hydrophobics, can prevent the individual subunits from folding properly. The "Core Limit: Complex" objective will incur penalties if there are too many buried residues in the total assembly. This puzzle uses the Buried Unsats Objective, with a large penalty for buried polar atoms that can't make H-bonds. See the puzzle comments for more Objective details.
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CASP14 has released this refinement target with starting model's GDT_HA=51. This means that about half of the starting structure matches the native structure. Look for better scoring folds to find the true native structure!
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Design a binder against coronavirus! We'd like players to keep focusing on making closely packed interfaces with no extra BUNS. This puzzle prohibits SER and THR in helices, which may make it harder to satisfy BUNS, but should help the helices to fold correctly. Remember, if your designed protein creates Buried Unsats, then it will be less likely to fold and bind to the coronavirus target. (Note that this target protein includes 8 buried unsats that players may be unable to fix.) See the blog for more details about buried unsats, and for helpful tips to make a successful protein binder! Players may not load solutions from previous puzzles.