It may be too soon to tell if any cures will come from Foldit players, but Baker seems confident that Foldit could be a new route to uncovering elusive protein structures. Already his team has been surprised by the response to the game, not to mention some of the high scores some players have achieved assembling known proteins. Soon, Baker’s team hopes to introduce unsolved protein structures to the competitors and eventually, have players design proteins that might interact with pathogens like HIV. And that’s where the real payoff could kick in.