Foldit is an online citizen science 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 players 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 (64-bit), and 64-bit Linux (64-bit). 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 Campaign shows 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.
Please read the Foldit Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. Please also see the Rules of the Foldit wiki.
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 2094: Olivetolic Acid Ligand Binder Design: Round 4, expires 19 January 2022.
- Puzzle 2095: Revisiting Puzzle 109: Pumpkin, expires 20 January 2022.
- Puzzle 2096: Symmetric Trimer Design with AlphaFold Predictions, expires 21 January 2022.
- Design of the Month: January 2022, expires 31 January 2022. This sandbox puzzle awards no points, but challenges players to improve on a CD47 Binder Design by an anonymous Foldit player, from Puzzle 2078. See Foldit Lab Report #28 for more.
- As always, there's the Campaign to get started, and then Beginner Puzzles which allow players to hone their skills.
Updates
- Explain the campaign, Wayne!: The Campaign puzzles don't say "intro puzzle" any more, and a few leftover puzzles have been moved to the historic section of the wiki. The campaign puzzle pages and videos still show the old interface, but remain at least somewhat useful until some new content arrives.
- Hotter keys: the latest changes in devprev include a lot of new defaults for hotkeys and improvements to Configure Keyboard Shortcuts. (Those wiki pages have some catching up to do.) If you've upgraded, deleting your old hotkeys.txt will clear out some accumulated junk and reduce confusion. (As always, save a backup copy before deleting anything.)
- Face/Off: the new Foldit user interface is now the only Foldit interface. In the streamlined new version, the original interface and its pie menus are gone, and the selection interface has been reorganized. The Foldit blog post New Foldit Interface describes the result. The post Guide To Interface Changes helps track down various features in their new locations. Here on the wiki new interface icons to a quick guide to the icons in the action bar, and new interface migration for a more complete look at the changes.
- Categorically: the Small Molecule Design category is hosting new pages covering the latest version of small molecule, a.k.a. ligand, a.k.a. drug, design. Atom Selection and Fragment Selection start to peel back layers of the onion.
- AI, AI, AI - the AlphaFold AI protein predictor is now available as a tool in Foldit. Lab Report #23: AlphaFold in Foldit and the blog post The AlphaFold prediction tool in Foldit have more on this new tool.
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 )
Image credit: silent gene
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.
Discord
Try Discord as an alternative to Foldit's IRC chat. Key Foldit channels like #veteran and #global are mirrored between Discord and IRC by helpful bots.
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
Please see the Foldit wiki Rules before making changes.
If you are new to Fandom wikis, check out Fandom Basics.
For minor changes (typos, spelling, grammar, etc.) please go ahead and make the change.
For more substantial changes, please join the Foldit Discord server, and introduce yourself on the #wiki channel. The #wiki channel is the best place to discuss new articles or changes to existing articles.
Please try to keep your user name/screen name the same or at least recognizable between Foldit, Discord, and Fandom. That will help prevent confusion and misunderstandings.
The Foldit wiki has a Wanted Articles page, but it's mostly broken links and other things that need to be cleaned up. The Stubs page on the Foldit wiki is normally empty, but might contain a list of articles that need content added. Foldit has been busy adding new features lately, and the wiki is still trying to catch up. At some point, the stubs/wanted articles lists might become more relevant, but right now they're not really in use.
There's also a community portal page here on the wiki, but it's never been used.
