Creating novel protein folds (or even being able to predict how a natural one will fold) is a huge problem for basic science and for biological engineering. With the game “fold it”, not only can anyone with a computer participate in the search for better protein structure algorithms, but soon may be able to use something like this to design totally new proteins, at least at small scales.
This stuff is great, but I think that the main problem with the current approaches to protein structure determination and prediction is that it is totally static. It’s still very hard to incorporate the flexibility of proteins into models of what proteins look like, and protein structures are currently determined when the proteins have been artificially crystallized into a non-biological lattice. What are we missing in our models of how proteins work? Are we losing something important to protein function by focusing computational models on predicting crystallized structures? Will we be able to actually create new protein folds from scratch using these kinds of methods? Can everything in biology even be explained by the equations of thermodynamics?
One big thing that I wonder about is how a synthetic biology approach to protein structure will change the way we think about proteins. Importantly, will the focus on engineering and computational aspects of biological systems maintain the static view of how proteins look and function, or will the ability to test models in a biological context promote a more fluid, flexible understanding of how proteins work?
