(This post was originally sent out on July 3 to our mailing list. You can sign up for the mailing list here to receive weekly updates about Foldit, including tips and tricks and see the top-scoring solutions to the week's puzzles. Don't forget to join our Discord as well to stay in the chat even when you're not folding!)

Hey folders!

Dev Josh here with your weekly Foldit update.

This week we saw the introduction of the Reaction Design tool. The devs are working hard on polishing it up and making it more usable! As always, thanks for your feedback and bug reports. You can submit more feedback here.

Top Results from Puzzle 1856: Coronavirus Round 12

In this puzzle, I accidentally evo'ed on a broken developer build and got the top score. Whoops, sorry about that!
Here are some of the solutions at the top of the leaderboards. [A note from our scientists: the top of the leaderboards doesn't always mean the most scientifically useful. These highlights are not scientific feedback and are not officially endorsed as scientifically valid designs by the Foldit team.]

Join the mailing list to see what others are folding!

Recipe of the Week

This week's recipe is an oldie but a goodie from drjr. The recipe is called Reset, and it does what it says on the tin: reset to the best score, unfreeze the protein, remove all your bands, and set the CI to 1. A simple recipe, but a handy quality of life tool for when you just need to backtrack a little.

Player of the Week

Quick shoutout to argyrw for always being a friendly voice in chat! Say hi to her in global or veteran chat.

Today’s Master Folding Tips

Beginner: Are you still using Pull to draft your protein in the early game? Try making cutpoints and moving pieces around with the Move tool, it's so much easier! Don't forget to disable cutpoint bands in the Behavior tab, or they'll all come together again when you wiggle.

Intermediate: It can be really tempting mid-game to just switch to running recipes. But give some time to carefully inspect every acceptor and donor (the red and blue dots) to see what hydrogen bonds you can form, and manually mutate as needed. Not only will this lower your BUNS, but it'll help form a strong hbond network. The scientists love this, and your rank will too!

Expert: If you haven't already, read bkoep's blog on binder design metrics. DDG, SASA, and SC are going to become really important soon since we're looking to add objectives for them. So understanding and practicing these principles now can help you get a headstart on the competition! Use the protein design sandbox to try out some ideas.

Have a tip to share or a recipe to recommend? Reply with your suggestions or make a wiki page for your ideas! Reaction Design doesn't have a page yet, so if you understand this tool, help out your community by writing about it! (Since writing this post, LociOiling has graciously created the page for Reaction Design puzzles.)

Until next time, happy folding!

( Posted by  joshmiller 94 609  |  Mon, 07/06/2020 - 18:11  |  3 comments )

The first experimental results are back for Foldit coronavirus anti-inflammatory designs! These experiments tested whether Foldit player designs could bind the the IL6R target. Check out the Foldit blog for more!

(Tue, 06/30/2020 - 23:48  |  0 comments)