You don’t have to be a scientist to do science! By playing the computer game Foldit, you can help discover new antiviral drugs that might stop the novel coronavirus. The most promising solutions will be manufactured and tested at the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design in Seattle.
Foldit is run by academic research scientists. It is free to play and not-for-profit. To get started, download Foldit on your computer and create a username.
We recommend that new players start with the Foldit Intro Puzzles.
After some practice, move on to the Science Puzzles and try out the Beginner: Coronavirus puzzle.
We also have an advanced coronavirus puzzle where you can try to design an antiviral protein from scratch!
To meet other players, check out the Foldit Discord channels.
Note: Foldit is an interactive computer game and not a distributed computing project. If you would like to donate spare computer time to science, please check out the Rosetta@Home project on BOINC.
To support laboratory testing, please consider making a donation to the Institute for Protein Design at the UW School of Medicine.
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