Does anyone know if anyone (folders) has been working on private work yet? or had offers?
What would be an expected salary for such a Folder ?
What laws govern the work (proteins, designed or found in nature )that we may one day undertake with our accuired knowledge of folding proteins. ( or working with viruses )
as per
Goals of Foldit
For protein structure prediction, the eventual goal is to have human folders work on proteins that do not have a known structure. This would require first attracting the attention of scientists and biotech companies and convincing them that the process is effective. Another goal is to take folding strategies that human players have come up with while playing the game, and automate these strategies to make protein-prediction software more effective. These two goals are more or less independent and either or both may happen.
The more interesting goal for Foldit, perhaps, is not in protein prediction but protein design. Designing new proteins may be more directly practical than protein prediction, as the problem you must solve as a protein designer is basically an engineering problem (protein engineering), whether you are trying to disable a virus or scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's also a relatively new field compared to protein prediction. There aren't a lot of automated approaches to protein design, so Foldit's human folders will have less competition from the machines.
How do we as folders go about ensuring the best possible environment for everyone involved / fair employment opportunities worldwide? how do we determine "ability" or skill levels of each individual ?
This is an exciting prospect for those of us whom work in teams to acheive folding/protein goals or work alone to get similar results. is anyone or does anyone want to engage in this topic to bring it into reality with me / us (protein folders )
respectfully
Aot.
...in my family, it is just the other way around.
My sister has learned chemistry at BAYER, and now she is working for a food-chemical company, but she will do folding as hobby.
In my personal background, I've learned programming in my apprenticeship for electronics and packing at my actual warehouse-job (so I know how to compress things 
, and do folding to "unleash" my abilites.
Kind regards,
Alex
http://www.er.doe.gov/ascr/incite/2010INCITEFactSheets.pdf
Check this out ! cool.
Type: Renewal
Title: “Computational Protein Structure Prediction and Protein Design”
Principal Investigator: David Baker, University of Washington
Scientific Discipline: Biological Sciences: Biophysics
INCITE Allocation: 50,000,000 Processor Hours
Site: Argonne National Laboratory
Machine (Allocation): IBM Blue Gene/P (50,000,000 Processor Hours)
Research Summary:
The goals for this project are two-fold. First, high-resolution structure prediction tools will be
used to build models of proteins with atomic-level accuracy; these will prove useful in rational
structure-based drug design. Second, INCITE resources will be used to computationally
engineer both proteins and enzymes with new functions for applications ranging from basic
research to therapeutics to bioremediation. Prediction of high-resolution protein structures from
their amino acid sequences and the refinement of low-resolution models to high resolution are
longstanding problems in computational biology. Tools will be developed to help
experimentalists solve structures of biologically important proteins for which experimental X-ray
phases are not available or hard to obtain. In addition, early stage NMR structures will be
refined to significantly speed up NMR structure determination. Many proteins carry out multiple
complex cellular functions. In order to decipher which portions of the protein surface are
responsible for a particular function, it would be desirable to selectively disable a portion of the
protein surface. INCITE resources will be used to extend sampling, enabling researchers to test
new protein scaffolds, examine additional structural hypothesis regarding determinants of
binding, and ultimately design proteins that tightly bind endogenous cellular proteins. INCITE
resources will also be used to computationally design a novel enzyme from de-novo methods to
catalyze the carbamate hydrolysis reaction. A successful enzyme would enhance our
understanding of mechanism of enzyme catalysis and offer potential avenues towards
contaminated soil bioremediation. The creation of proteins capable of catalyzing any desired
chemical reaction is a grand challenge for computational protein design.
What's the Future of the Gold-Fish pond? Threading or Folding ? you Decide !?
anyone ?