Foldit

Foldit is a computer game that enables you to contribute to important scientific research in protein folding.

Players compete with one another to discover high-scoring protein folds, which represent a protein’s physical structure. Knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works, what can go wrong (e.g. in disease), and how the protein can be treated with drugs and therapies.

Foldit players can also design new protein drugs themselves. In our Coronavirus Challenge, you can design an anti-viral protein to interfere with the infection pathway of the 2019 coronavirus. The best designs are manufactured and tested by scientists at the UW Institute for Protein Design.

There are many, many possible ways to fold or design a protein—too many to enumerate using a computer. We rely on Foldit players intuition and “big picture” reasoning to discover new folds and designs.

Play Foldit at https://fold.it