Fold-It!

So, for those of you who don't know, Fold-It is an experimental video game about protein folding. It developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry. Recently, the gamers of Fold-It solved an HIV enzyme riddle in only 3 weeks! If you would like to read about this on Scientific American, click here.

Now, to the game of Fold-It! Honestly, I expected it to be very boring. But I was pleasantly surprised to see the sharp visuals and cool features! The game even had sound effects, and we all know sound effects make everything better. I felt a great sense of accomplishment every time I finished a puzzle, and then I realized I was doing only the simple introductory ones.

So, I started off doing levels 1 and 2. These were a breeze and didn't require much thought. But in order to get to the higher level puzzles, I had to do them because you can only unlock upper levels by completing lower level ones.

Then, I completed level 3-1: Sheets Together.

This puzzle mostly involved hydrogen bonding. It started off with just one hydrogen bond, and ended with five of them. To solve the puzzle, I pressed wiggle for a few seconds, and then I pressed stop. By doing so, the protein's sidechains and backbones were wiggled into place, and hydrogen bonds were formed. Initially, the one hydrogen bond holding the two sheets was very weak. But with the addition of four more hydrogen bonds, the sheets were slightly more stable in their holding together, hence the name "Sheets Together."


Afterwards, I completed level 3-2: Lonely Sheets.

This introduced rubber bands to help solve the puzzle. I noticed there were many empty voids in the beginning. So I put two rubber bands across the greatest voids and pressed wiggle. This helped lessen the voids. However, by doing so I ended up creating some more voids! So I put another rubber band across the protein and pressed wiggle. This helped and at this point, I only needed 16 more points to complete the puzzle. I put another rubber band across the widest space of the protein, and pressed wiggle. After half of a second, I pressed stop. And thus my puzzle was complete! The usage of all of the rubber bands were to bring the sheets together and help them create bonds. The most challenging part of this puzzle was figuring out where to place the rubber bands. And I did mess up a few times. But luckily I discovered the undo feature which helped me fix any errors. In the end, the sheets were brought together and were no longer, "Lonely Sheets."

Next, I completed level 3-3: Sheets and Ladders.

This structure started out looking like a big "S". I decided to follow the same method that I used in the previous puzzle. I immediately placed a rubber band across the protein, and pressed wiggle. This caused the protein to fold up into a globular (my fave word!) shape, and a few hydrogen bonds were created. I noticed one large void towards the bottom, so I placed another rubber band across there and pressed wiggle. And just like that, I had solved the puzzle! I did it in only two moves, so I consider that an accomplishment. This puzzle didn't seem too difficult to me, because it was pretty much just building hydrogen bonds by bringing the protein together.

Next, I completed puzzles 3-4: Lock and Lower (not required) and 3-5: Rebuild (not required). Puzzle 3-4 gave me some trouble at first. I was just playing around with it, and pretty much dug myself a deep hole. At this point, I chose to reset the puzzle and not too long after I solved it. Although 3-5 looks complicated, I was able to solve it in two moves! I just used rubber bands and wiggle to do so.

Last but not least, I completed level 4-1: Hide the Hydrophobic.

For a level 4 puzzle, I was expecting it to be very complicated and difficult. But it was exactly the opposite. There was an orange hydrophobic region and a blue hydrophilic region. First I dragged the orange hydrophobic region towards the center to "hide" it from the exterior. Next, I dragged the blue hydrophilic region towards the outside, so it could be "exposed" to the exterior. The puzzle perfectly fit it's cute name, "Hide the Hydrophobic."

All in all, I actually enjoyed doing the Fold-It puzzles. I learned a little bit about proteins along the way, and I got to have fun playing with the structures. If this sounds interesting to you, I would say give it a try!