Results from Foldit have been included in a number of scientific publications.
Foldit players have been cited collectively as "Foldit players" or "Players, F." in some cases. Individual players have also been listed as authors on at least one paper, and on four related Protein Data Bank depositions.
*An August 2010 paper in the journal Nature credited Foldit's 57,000 players with providing useful results that matched or outperformed algorithmically computed solutions, stating "[p]layers working collaboratively develop a rich assortment of new strategies and algorithms; unlike computational approaches, they explore not only conformational space but also the space of possible search strategies".
*A November 2011 article in PNAS compared "recipes" developed by Foldit players to Rosetta scripts developed by members of the Baker Lab at the University of Washington. The player-developed "Blue Fuse" recipe compared favorably with the scientists' "Fast Relax" algorithm.
*In 2011, Foldit players helped decipher the crystal structure of a retroviral protease from Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (M-PMV), a monkey virus which causes HIV/AIDS-like symptoms, a scientific problem that had been unsolved for 15 years. While the puzzle was available for three weeks, players produced a 3D model of the enzyme in only ten days that is accurate enough for molecular replacement.
*In January 2012, Scientific American reported that Foldit gamers achieved the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein, an enzyme that catalysed the Diels–Alder reactions widely used in synthetic chemistry. A team including David Baker in the Center for Game Science at University of Washington in Seattle computationally designed the enzyme from scratch but found its potency needed improvement. Foldit players reengineered the enzyme by adding 13 amino acids, increasing its activity by more than 18 times.
*A September 2016 article in Nature Communications detailed a "crystallographic model-building competition between trained crystallographers, undergraduate students, Foldit players and automatic model-building algorithms" in which "a team of Foldit players achieved the most accurate structure" fitting a protein to the results of an X-ray crystallography experiment.
*A July 2018 article in Nature Communications reviewed the collaboration between Foldit players and teams in the WeFold consortium in biennial CASP competitions CASP11 and CASP12.
*A June 2019 letter in Nature described the analysis of proteins designed by Foldit players. Four player-designed proteins were successfully grown in E. coli and then "solved" via X-ray crystallography. The proteins were added to the Protein Data Bank as [https://www.rcsb.org/structure/6MRR 6MRR], [https://www.rcsb.org/structure/6MRS 6MRS], [https://www.rcsb.org/structure/6MSP 6MSP], and [https://www.rcsb.org/structure/6NUK 6NUK].
*In November 2019, an article in PLOS Biology reported how Foldit players were able to "build protein structures into crystallographic, high-resolution maps more accurately than expert crystallographers or automated model-building algorithms" using data from cryo EM experiments.