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Foldit is an online game in which humans try to solve one of the hardest computational problems in biology: protein folding. You don't need to know anything about biology to play the game, although a little background will help. Most Foldit player are not biologists. Read about The Science Behind Foldit.

Coronavirus!

In response to the global pandemic, Foldit has been coronavirus puzzles of various types.

The puzzles so far have involved designing binder proteins to attach to the coronavirus spike protein, designing anti-inflammatory proteins to calm the "cytokine storm" sometimes triggered by the virus, and predicting the 3D structure of proteins the virus is believed to manufacture, with names like NSP2, NSP6, and ORF3a.

There will probably be coronavirus puzzles running for the foreseeable future, see the official list of puzzles for details.

See the Coronavirus FAQ for general information about the Foldit coronavirus puzzles.

New Players

Visit the fold.it, the official Foldit site to download the game and get started. Foldit runs on Windows, Mac, and 64-bit Linux. See Download-Install-Troubleshoot for install instructions. Use the feedback page if you're having trouble getting the game installed. If you're seeing "error contacting server" messages, update this feedback with details.

The Intro Puzzles show you the tools, try them before trying a science puzzle. (deutsch) | (svenska)

The video QUICK Foldit Tutorial Walkthrough from S0ckrates shows the fast path through the intro puzzles.

See Get Started Playing Foldit for more background.

Foldit's education mode features a series of puzzles that go into much more technical depth than the regular intro puzzles. (Education mode involves installing a separate version of Foldit, see For Educators on the Foldit web site.)

Please read the Foldit Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.

See Foldit Status for any issues affecting the game.

What's folding

Note: this list gets updated weekly after the last puzzle expires. See the official list of puzzles for the most current puzzle info.

• Puzzle 1891: Symmetric Trimer Design: H-bond Networks, expires 23 September 2020.
• Puzzle 1892: Coronavirus Binder Design: Round 18, expires 24 September 2020. It's accompanied by the devprev puzzle Sandbox Puzzle 1892 with Binder Metrics, which lets players see the binder metrics for their designs.
• Puzzle 1890: Revisiting Puzzle 136: Cell Adhesion, expires 25 September 2020.
• LCB1 Coronavirus Spike Binder, expires 30 September 2020. This sandbox puzzle awards no points.
• As always, there are Intro Puzzles to get started, and then Beginner Puzzles which allow players to hone their skills.

Updates

• Objective oriented: the new DDG, SASA, and shape complementarity objectives are now part of the main update group. The Foldit team is still trying to streamline these metrics, so at the moment, you'll only see them in devprev "shadow" puzzles.
• No revisiting: a series of CASP refinement puzzles has interrupted the normal revisiting puzzles. These puzzles present one or more CASP "solutions" to a protein. The real solutions , determined experimentally, haven't been published yet. The CASP solutions are a poor match. Foldit players once again get a chance to show up the scientists by finding a better solution.
• Discord comes to Foldit: A new Discord server gives players a new spot to hang out. Discord is oriented toward online gaming, and offers many features not found in IRC chat. In addition to basic text chat, Discord has voice chat and even screen sharing options. Discord has apps for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, and also offers web access. Discord users can be connected on multiple platforms at the same time. Messages on Discord persist, so offline users can catch up later.
• Deep thoughts: a Foldit blog post describes the upcoming energy landscape optimization paper and provides a link to the pre-print version. Foldit players have a chance to be listed by name in this paper, a gracious concession from the robot overlords.
• DOTM: Design of the Month: August 2020 lets players tinker with a design NinjaGreg created on Puzzle 1864. This puzzle awards no points, but lets players see a successful design in full detail. Players can try to refine the design, or start over with a new design. As the name implies, the puzzle runs for the month of August.
• Chillin': the Foldit Cryo-EM paper has been published in PLOS Biology. The Foldit blog makes you scroll down before announcing Foldit players take gold!. Once again, Foldit players beat actual scientists. The paper's supplement (docx format) contains commentary from several Foldit players on how they did it.
• Free proteins: the four known solved Foldit designs seen in the Foldit protein design paper are now available in all their 3D glory in the PDB.
• Nurture versus Nature: De novo protein design by citizen scientists, describing the results of Foldit design puzzles, was published in Nature 5 June 2019. Five Foldit players are listed as named authors, along with "Foldit Players". A longer list of players appears in the "Supplementary information" section. See the Foldit blog post about the paper. Congratulations to lead author Brian Koepnick!
• Closely contested: Foldit now lets you bring your own protein with custom contests. This feature has been frequently requested for classroom puzzles. We'll have more about it on the wiki soon, in the mean time read the paper describing how it works.
• Naming names: a number of Foldit players are listed as authors (using their real names) on an article just published in Nature Scientific Reports. See Interesting Articles (under "contribution of Foldit players to scientific results") for a complete list and a link to the paper.

Videos

• FolditatUW - foldit's official YouTube channel.
• P1 - Introduction to Protein Design (15m)
• P2 - Design of New Protein Functions (27m)
• Beta_Helix's Foldit video the basics explained (40m)
• Through the eyes of a scientist Design solutions reviewed (26m)
• Design solutions reviewed Part 2 (22m)
• As seen on TV: Origami Revolution. Nova on PBS featured protein folding, David Baker, Rosetta@Home and Foldit. (Minutes 20 through 28, with Foldit briefly mentioned at 23:45.)

Tools, tips, techniques

• Foldit 101 - Useful information about Puzzle Types, the Cookbook and recipe basics.
• How to get started - With pictures from an actual puzzle
• Puzzle Results - screen shots of top scoring and interesting player solutions.
• Blackbelt Folding - Sessions 1,2, 3 & 4 denovo
• Electron Density - info and videos
• Hydrogen Bond Networks
• Download-Install-Troubleshoot includes Tracks, devprev and using multiple clients on Windows, Mac and Linux
• Foldit chat (IRC)
• Frequently asked questions
• Foldit Accessibility
• Foldit Translations

Several translations of the Foldit Wiki are available:
German Italian Japanese Korean Russian Spanish French

Featured articles

• Strategy - how to improve your score
• TheGame - tools, score details and Lua scripting
• Groups-Players - groups (teams), players and a bit of humour.
• The Research Room - advanced discussions and lots of external links
• Scientist and Developer Chats
• Hydrogen Bond Networks
• Small molecule design puzzles
• Interesting Articles

Contents   ( View All Pages - Foldit Wikia Index )