After the first three rounds of our Coronavirus Binder Design challenge, we've selected 99 of the most promising Foldit player solutions for experimental testing!

Once a Foldit puzzle closes, we run some further analysis to figure out which designs are the most likely to fold and bind to the target. You can read more about some of that analysis on our previous blog post. To select promising designs, we consider Foldit score in addition to metrics that correlate with proper folding and others that correlate with binding.

We've combined those metrics to choose 33 designs from each of rounds one, two, and three of the Coronavirus Binder Design challenge. In total, 99 Foldit binder designs will be tested at the UW Institute for Protein Design, with the same experiments that have already begun for computationally-designed binders.

It will be a few more weeks before genes arrive and we can begin experiments on the Foldit designs. In the meantime, we'll continue to work on designing better binders in Foldit, so stay tuned for more puzzles! Be sure to review our tips for designing successful binders and watch coronavirus expert Lexi Walls, Ph.D. discuss early Foldit designs!

Below are the 99 designed proteins that we'll test for binding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (click to view the full-size image). Remember to fill out our username sharing form if you want to see your username in Foldit updates!

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