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.
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)
See Get Started Playing Foldit for more.
Please read the Foldit Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
See Foldit Status for any issues affecting the game.
Updates
- Hacks for Macs: as bkoep mentions in the Foldit Lab Report #2 on YouTube, the Catalina version of MacOS means no more 32-bit clients. A fresh download and install of the Mac 64-bit client is needed. See Transferring Foldit Data (thanks again, bkoep) for tips on how to copy your settings and more to the new setup. (Foldit file and directory structure and Manual update here on the wiki may also be of interest for those who tinker.)
- Pet symmitry: just in time for Halloween, the devprev release allows banding to the symmetric chains in a symmetry puzzle. The new function structure.GetSymCount detects how many symmetric chains are available. A value of zero means it's not a symmetry puzzle. The function band.AddBetweenSegments now allows the band's endpoint to be on one of the symmetric copies.
- 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
David Baker (U. Washington HHMI) Crowd Sourcing Protein Folding Rosetta@Home and FoldIt
- 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 )
Players can submit screenshots of their best or most interesting results using the camera button in chat. The Foldit wiki has thousands of these images. See recent puzzle results and older results for a complete list. See posting results for tips on how to post.
The Science
These pages describe the science of protein folding.
- Structure
- Primary Structure
- Secondary Structure
- Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic (also known as "blue out, orange in")
- Protein Folding Theory
- CASP
- Rosetta@Home
- Biochemistry I
Helping out
This is a wiki about the Foldit game that anyone can edit. Before you do edit it, however, please take a look around and determine whether or not the article you'd like to write already exists. (If it does exist, feel free to make it better!)
To write a new article, just enter the article title in the box below.
- Not sure where to start?
- Find out more about the wiki on the About page.
- If you are new to wikis, check out the tutorial.
- Check out Help:Starting this wiki if you're setting up the wiki.
- Adding content
- Every wiki has two list of articles that need help called "Stubs" and "Wanted Articles". Don't be shy, get in there.
- Uploading images is another really easy way to help out - see the Special:Upload page!
- You can find a list of useful templates on Category:Templates, some of which are documented on the templates project page.
- Talk and more...
- Check out the community portal to see what the community is working on, to give feedback or just to say hi.
