Developer Preview Update - New Alignment Tool
Hey everyone! We've just released an update to the developer preview, which introduces several changes.
The biggest item is the new alignment tool. Before, the alignment tool worked by having players select the alignment that they want, and then by pressing thread, Foldit would try to fit onto the template. One of the big problems with the old alignment tool is that this didn't always work: if there was too big of a gap in the alignment, the alignment would fail.
The new tool avoids this problem completely through the use of cutpoints. Now when there is a gap in the alignment, a cutpoint is inserted, that the player has to remove before getting credit for the puzzle. This ensures that the alignment tool nearly always works. The other nice benefit of this new style is that it's fast - whenever you make a change to the alignment, you can see the results of your threading instantly, in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface.
Be sure the check out the new tutorial levels for the alignment panel!
Also in this update are several new sliders. The first is a global band strength slider. The others let you adjust how many different sidechain positions shake tries for both exposed and buried sidechains. Be sure to check these out as well!
A full list of changes is listed below:
Sliders
Global band strength added
Sliders for buried and exposed sidechain accuracy added
View Options
Option added to disable guide pulsing
Cookbook
The cookbook is now horizonally resizable
Alignment Panel
The alignment panel has been reworked -
Instead of failing to thread, it will insert cutpoints into the puzzle where there are gaps, and players will have to resolve these before getting credit.
When threading, changes to the sequence alignment in the alignment panel will be immediately reflected on the player's protein.
Intro Puzzles
New intro puzzles for the new alignment tool and cutpoints
Move Tool
Large sphere removed from the move tool to make working on smaller pieces easier
LUA
Added lua interface for the new sliders
Bug Fixes
band.GetLength() should work correctly now
Wiggle should behave better, and the backbone shouldn't get stuck in unideal conformations as often
Fourth CASP ROLL target R0004 has been cancelled
Many of you noticed that a new CASP ROLL target was released yesterday, but was due in 8 days!
Well, we just received this email from the organizers:
"Dear CASP ROLL participants,
Structure of target R0004 has just been released by the PDB, one week ahead of the originally scheduled date, and we have to cancel it.
The next CASP ROLL target will be released for prediction tomorrow.
CASP organizers"
Hopefully they give us more than 8 days to work on it!
(Wed, 01/25/2012 - 01:10 | 0 comments)New Foldit paper published today in Nature Biotechnology!
There is a Nature News article about the paper:
http://www.nature.com/news/victory-for-crowdsourced-biomolecule-design-1...
You can view the paper on the Nature website (and download the Supplementary Material):
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2109.html#/supp...
We have provided a PDF of the paper on the Baker Lab website:
http://depts.washington.edu/bakerpg/drupal/node/424
Congratulations again for this amazing result!
(Sun, 01/22/2012 - 20:25 | 12 comments)Foldit chat guidelines
Due to recent discussions about what is appropriate for chat in Foldit, we're posting guidelines for the chat here: http://fold.it/portal/guidelines .
(Sat, 01/21/2012 - 21:47 | 9 comments)New player welcome & CASP update!
We'd like to welcome all the new players that are joining Foldit!
Click here to get started: http://fold.it/portal/node/988864
If you need help with the Intro Puzzles, please read: http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Tutorial_Puzzles
We just received this email from the CASP organizers:
Happy New Year to all CASP ROLL participants!
Next week we are planning on releasing two more targets.
CASP organizers
