Foldit Wiki
Advertisement
Level 3-4 Lock and Lower

Lock and Lower. One sheet is sticking out. Use bands to pull it toward the sheets on either side. Use freezing or bands to keep the sheets that are already bonded from pulling apart.

In this puzzle, one sheet is pointing off into space. A group of three sheets is already bonded together. Another sheet is off to one side, connected to the out-of-line sheet by a short section of loop.

The goal is to pull all five sheets together into one unit. The first step is to draw bands between the out-of-line sheet and the sheet on either side. Here you'll probably need five or six bands between each sheet.

It will probably help to rotate the protein, by clicking and dragging on the white background, before trying to draw bands.

If you wiggle after drawing bands, you'll probably see the sheets that are already bonded start to pull apart, breaking the hydrogen bonds. This is where freezing comes in handy. If you double-click on a sheet, the sheet freezes, which prevents it from changing shape. In this case, freezing should keep the bonded sheets bonded.

If you want, you can draw bands between the bonded sheet instead of freezing. You don't necessarily need to band every hydrogen bond, but at least three or four bands for each pair of sheets is a good idea.

As usual, wiggle and shake to finish. If results are good, you raise your score by unfreezing with the "Unfreeze Protein" button (keyboard shortcut "f"), followed by another round of wiggle-shake-wiggle. Finally, remove bands with the "Remove Bands" button (keyboard shortcut "r") and then wiggle-shake-wiggle one last time.

Technical stuff: this protein looks a more realistic than some of the earlier examples.

Madde's "Lock and Lower" video

Advertisement