Journal post from David Baker

Last year we described in Science magazine the design of a new enzyme which catalyzes a chemical reaction called the Diels Alder reaction involving the formation of two carbon-carbon bonds. This reaction is interesting because no natural enzymes are known to catalyze the reaction. However, it wasn't a very good enzyme, and we asked FoldIt players to try to improve it. As described in Nature Biotechnology this month, remarkably FoldIt players were able to make the designed enzyme 20 times faster by inserting a completely new loop which helps the enzyme bind the chemicals it links together. The combination of Rosetta@Home and FoldIt is turning out to be powerful indeed for solving challenging problems in biomedicine!