One of the goals of Foldit is to design new proteins that fold up spontaneously the way natural proteins do. To date, efforts to design self-folding proteins in Foldit have not been successful. Foldit researchers have identified "ideal loops" as one way to make player-designed proteins more likely to behave like natural proteins. "Loops" are of course sections of a protein that lack a specific secondary structure. Often, relatively short sections of loop connect sections which have a secondary structure of sheet or helix. (In other cases, a long, meandering loop may connect sheets and helixes.)