Foldit Wiki

Foldit is an online citizen-science game originally started back in 2007 to tackle protein folding, one of the hardest problems in computational biology. The idea was to use human intuition to bypass the limitations of computer algorithms. In addition to figuring out protein structures, Foldit players have also designed new synthetic proteins, and are now designing new small molecules that bind to proteins.

You don't need to know anything about biology to play Foldit, but a little background will help. Most Foldit players are not biologists. Read about The Science Behind Foldit.

New Players

Visit fold.it (the official Foldit site) to download the game and get started. Foldit runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. See Download-Install-Troubleshoot for install instructions. Post to the bugs forum if you're having trouble getting the game installed.

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 puzzles introduce the game, much like the Campaign, but focus more on the biochemistry aspects.

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 2441: Revisiting Puzzle 153: Rosetta Decoy 13, expires 17 April 2024.
• Puzzle 2442: Electron Density Reconstruction 86, expires 18 April 2024.
• Puzzle 2443: Revisiting CCHFV Round 2, expires 19 April 2024.
• As always, there's the Campaign to get started, and then Beginner Puzzles which allow players to hone their skills.

Updates

• Rephasers on stun: the new Refine Density tool is now part of the main release. The new tool refines or "rephases" the density based on the current position of the protein. This week's electron density reconstruction puzzle (2427) does not allow using the tool. A new electron density puzzle that does allow the tool is waiting in the wings and may appear in the new future.
• Strike up the (one-way) band! The long-awaited one-way band is here. The new feature adds "disable pull" and "disable push" to band adjustments, along with length, strength, delete, and disable. There's no recipe interface yet, and a one-way band looks just like an ordinary band.
• Cool for school: the Education page has been updated to match 2024. The list of puzzles has been updated, and there are now links to the Campaign help when a puzzle is similar. All the Education puzzles now have their own help pages as well. Thanks to Foldit player cjddig for videos covering most of the edu puzzles. See cjddig's YouTube channel for more.
• Blupdate: there are new results, so the SARS Nsp3 CACHE Challenge preliminary results blog post has been updated. With improved methods, the CACHE organizers found four additional Foldit compounds that passed initial screening. Three compounds from Bruno Kestemont and one from nspc join the two that were tagged initially. (One from ucad, and one from Sandrix72.) The section titled "UPDATE – Additional compounds!" has the molecule diagrams and SMILES for the new results. (Due to competition deadlines, the CACHE puzzles appear to have finished for now.)
• Recon decon: the goals of the Electron Density Reconstruction series were clarified 20 December 2023 in an office hour. Foldit developer petridecus led the discussion, with participation from beta_helix and seth.cooper as well. It turns out our ED recon results are being compared to what the PDB Redo project has come up with. To quote petridecus:

Over the past several months we have been working with the team over at PDB Redo to compare models that Foldit players created to the top solutions in the PDB Redo database.  We created these comparisons by grouping Foldit solutions by score and sending them to PDB Redo’s API for some additional polishing and analysis.  Results indicated that in the 58 puzzles that were possible to analyze (out of the first 65), Foldit solutions were better in 39 cases!

• Refined Density: the new Refine Density tool is previewed in devprev in a test [Devprev] Density Refinement Puzzle. The new tool refines or "rephases" the density based on the current position of the protein. The test puzzle has been renewed several times as development continues.u
• Hot hot hotkeys: the Hotkey page now has all known hotkeys. There's also printable cheat sheet in PDF format.
• Drugit - the Foldit blog announced that the preprint of the VHL ligand design paper is now available on ChemRxiv. Congratulations to Foldit player Nicm25, who gets prominent mention in the text. The paper actually uses the term "Drugit" to describe small molecule design in Foldit. The full title is "Drugit: Crowd-sourcing molecular design of non-peptidic VHL binders".
• Oldit, getting old - the old Foldit website is still available at http://old.fold.it/portal/, but it's certificate has expired. Depending on which browser you use, you'll still be able to access it if you click through several security warnings. As long as you don't post your credit card numbers or medical information, the old site should be mostly harmless. The Foldit team stresses that the old site will go away at some point.
• 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

Join The Foldit Discord Server

Get the Invite

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.

Forecast

• The Refine Density tool is still under development, but may reappear soon.
• The Private puzzle feature is working, allowing users to create their own puzzles.
• The Education puzzles now have their own individual help pages, just like the Campaign.

The Science

These pages describe the science of protein folding.

• Structure
  • Design structures
• Primary Structure
  • Amino Acids
  • Amino Acid Gallery
  • Amino Acid Secondary Structure Preferences
  • Backbone
  • Peptide Bond
  • Sidechain
• Secondary Structure
  • Sheet
  • Helix
  • Disulfide Bridge
  • Glycine Hinge
  • U-Turn
• Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic (also known as "blue out, orange in")
  • Hydrophobicity
  • Hydropathy index
• 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 Pages with broken file links is a more specific way to find broken links. It doesn't include things like categories where the optional category page doesn't exist. It should be normally be empty.

The Stubs page on the Foldit wiki is normally empty, but might contain a list of articles that need content added. At some point, the stubs/wanted articles lists might become more relevant, but right now they're not really in use. Adding the template {{Stub}} to a page adds it to the Stubs category.

There's also a community portal page here on the wiki, but it's never been used.