OpenKnot Round 9 features secondary structures designed by players to create compact, pseudoknotted RNA using 240 bases. GenAI teams also will be testing whether their methods can perform as well as the expert players at a longer length. Check out the puzzle at: eternagame.org/labs/14343053

Eternacon 12 will be Sunday, July 26, 9am to 2pm PT featuring talks on player pseudoknot design techniques, the Montparnasse algorithm solving the Eterna100, an RNA scaffold for cryo-EM, and results for our pilot Replicase puzzle. #RNAsky Free to register at eternagame.org/eternacon/2026

Can humans+AI get 1M #cryoEM-able #RNA structures? Phase 1: humans design 1000 pseudoknot structures @eternagame.org by Jul 19. Phase 2: AIs design 1000 sequences for each by Jul 31. Come join! Latest phase of the OpenKnot challenge eternagame.org/challenges/1... #citsci #RNAsky

Eterna@eternagame.org · 4w ago

Eterna's newest puzzle challenges players to design 240-base RNA strands that will fold into compact pseudoknots. The puzzle provides a metric for counting the number of pairs that cross to form large, synthetic pseudoknots. #RNAsky #citsci Check out the puzzle at eternagame.org/labs/14333719

First AI-generated RNA with novel atomically ordered 3D fold! 🧬 The pseudoknotted secondary structure 'Kissing Multiloops' was designed by an Eterna player then solved by 3 GenAI models as confirmed by cryo-EM. ❄️🔬 #RNASky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The first three CASP 17 RNA targets are molecules designed by Eterna players as part of our OpenKnot puzzle series! Another example of how dedicated citizen scientists #citsci can contribute to cutting-edge research. eternagame.org/challenges/1...

Das Lab@rdaslab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

First two targets in #CASP17 are #RNA, and they're designs from the online videogame @eternagame.org. Hope the bots preparing for CASP have been playing Eterna!

This week, learn about the crowdsource RNA design platform, Eterna, and Anthony Stohr's switch work. In the future, how could Eterna be used to tackle to 3D RNA structure problem? Meeting ID: 934 4593 5624 Passcode: 802843 Mailing list: groups.google.com/g/casp-rna-sig

Large and intricate naturally occurring structures composed exclusively of RNA... ROOL! More at Molecule of the Month: pdb101.rcsb.org/motm...

RNA switches designed by @eternagame.org players not only are highly efficient in vitro, they also work in cells! This is so cool! 🧪 @narjournal.bsky.social @markblenner.bsky.social Metabolite-responsive scaffold RNAs for dynamic CRISPR transcriptional regulation: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Metabolite-responsive scaffold RNAs for dynamic CRISPR transcriptional regulation

Abstract. CRISPR activation is a powerful tool to upregulate a vast array of genes in many different contexts. However, there are few dynamic CRISPR transc

academic.oup.com

An AI researcher interested in biochemistry modeling successfully improved his RNA language model through participation in the Eterna pseudoknot design competition. Congratulations, Chaitanya! 🧬🧪 #RNAsky The polymerase ribozyme results are pretty cool too. 😎

Chaitanya K. Joshi@chaitjo.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Introducing gRNAde: our own little "AlphaGo Moment" for RNA design! 🧬🚀 📝: tinyurl.com/gRNAde-paper Unlike proteins, RNA design has long relied on "wisdom of the crowd" (human experts) or the slow crawl of directed evolution — gRNAde changes that! 🧵👇

A new 3-state Replicase challenge has been launched on Eterna and will only be open for two weeks before sequences are collected for experimental testing at the Das Lab. Will Eterna players be able to improve the catalytic activity of the RNA polymerase? eternagame.org/labs/14183416

"Through progressively more difficult challenges, Eterna players developed and documented new and productive RNA design strategies. We incorporated player-derived strategies into a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm called ‘Nucleologic’ that allowed for automation of the RNA sensor design process."🧪

Das Lab@rdaslab.bsky.social · 9mo ago

@eternagame got single RNAs to compute functions like all logic gates, A>B, and A*B/C^2, relevant for tuberculosis detection! Now looking for partners to scale to complex applications. Collab w/ Greenleaf Khatri labs @christianchoe.bsky.social @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social at doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Yes, mook. The President of the United States was effective at conveying to his nation that he wishes to dump feces on whatever plurality of its citizens are opposed to him and his policies. Statesmanship to remember alongside that of the greats. Leadership so rare.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 10mo ago

Q: What does it say that president released a video of him pooping on the American people? MIKE JOHNSON: You can argue he's probably the most effective person who has ever used social media. He's using satire to make a point. He's not calling for the murder of his political opponents.

"The employees 'were sent incorrect notifications, which was fixed last night and this morning with a technical correction,' a senior administration official said. 'Any correction has already been remedied.'" The nation is being run by idiots. Idiots with power. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...

Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error

nytimes.com

I don't know how template-based modeling works, but I'm excited to see it in action someday! 🧪 #RNAsky #machinelearning #bioinformatics

Das Lab@rdaslab.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The results are in: top codes in Stanford #RNA 3D Folding @kaggle.com competition are competitive with CASP16-leading humans Vfold, beat AlphaFold 3. Top team’s trick was template-based modeling, not #DeepLearning. Congrats: john, odat, Eigen, + all 1706 participants! www.kaggle.com/competitions...

This quote from @whysharksmatter.bsky.social pretty much explains this phenomenon: "When I talk about fish on Bluesky, people ask me questions about fish. When I talk about fish on Twitter, people threaten to murder my family because we’re Jewish."

Ars Technica@arstechnica.com · 11mo ago

Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

“Why Are We Funding This?”

Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

americanscientist.org

Much-needed hike on Mt. Rainier yesterday to clear the mind. Lots of international visitors. America’s National Parks are very well-managed.

Coming up this weekend, Eternacon will feature presentations about fellow #citsci platform @zooniverse.bsky.social and how participants of both Zooniverse and Eterna have created #machinelearning tools for projects. @noirlabastro.bsky.social Register for free at eternagame.org/eternacon/2025

Learn more about how Eterna puzzles are being used for RNA education and outreach at the middle school, high school, and college level in the latest RCSB PDB newsletter. 🧬 🧪 cdn.rcsb.org/rcsb-pdb/gen...

EDUCATION CORNER: Interactive RNA Education with the Eterna Game

Eterna is an online game which models the base pairing and secondary structure of RNA sequences.

cdn.rcsb.org

RCSB Protein Data Bank@rcsbpdb.bsky.social · last yr.

Summer Newsletter Published Highlights training events, the Ligand Expo shutdown; accessing IHM data at RCSB PDB, and more. In the Education Corner, learn about Interactive RNA Education with the Eterna Game. cdn.rcsb.org/rcsb-pd...

Sad to hear Donna Guardino has passed away. Sal and Donna opened their gallery on NE Alberta across the street from my video store shortly before I rented my storefront. They were great neighbors and we talked frequently. www.orartswatch.org/donna-guardi...

Donna Guardino, gallery owner and a force behind the Alberta Arts District, dies at age 81 • Oregon ArtsWatch

A longtime icon in the Portland arts community, Guardino was known for championing the careers of new artists.

orartswatch.org

Looking forward to attending my first Conference for Advancing the Participatory Sciences this week and delivering a presentation during the Scientific Contributions session on how Eterna players created a large dataset of RNA sequences with pseudoknots for machine learning. 🧪 #CAPS2025

Need help modeling your RNA pseudoknot? Stanford researchers have released the RibonanzaNet-SS neural net, which appears to be outperforming other pseudoknot modeling methods as demonstrated by the Tetrahymena ribozyme in Eterna Puzzlemaker. 🧪

Are you a biochem professor attending the ASBMB annual meeting in April? @sarahsmaga.bsky.social and I will be leading a workshop on using the Eterna platform to introduce RNA pairing and folding in the undergraduate classroom: events.rdmobile.com/Sessions/Det... Hope to see you there! 🧬

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired. It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

I will be leading an Eterna town hall on Monday, March 3, 2pm PT to discuss the experimental results of mutating an Azoarcus ribozyme while maintaining catalytic activity. Eterna players were able to make as many as 75 mutations (out of 193 bases). 🧪 Everyone welcome: eternagame.org/news/13879937

Eterna is hosting a town hall this Monday at 2pm PT where three researchers from the Das Las will discuss CASP 16 RNA structure prediction, computational modeling of tertiary motifs, and pseudoknot design with deep learning. Zoom link at: eternagame.org/news/13834808

This new book demonstrates how participatory science has assisted researchers at different stages of the research process in many different fields. Engaging the public in the research process also is an effective way to foster public trust in science. 🧪 #citizenscience

European Citizen Science project@ecs.ngo · 2y ago

NEW BOOK "HOW AND WHEN TO INVOLVE CROWDS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH" co-authored by Henry Sauerman and Marion Poetz. The book is available open access: www.sciencewithcrowds.org

Really cool to see Alphafold featured on CBS Sunday Morning during the "Good news you may have missed" year-end review, along with murder hornets, another great story. John Jumper claimed determining the 3D structure of one #protein costs $100,000. Isn't it more in the $5,000-30,000 range?

Need to find a US Senator to ask RFK Jr to please explain this