Messenger RNA Design via Expected Partition Function and Continuous Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dai, Ning, Tang, Wei Yu, Zhou, Tianshuo, Mathews, David H., Huang, Liang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Dai, Ning
Tang, Wei Yu
Zhou, Tianshuo
Mathews, David H.
Huang, Liang
author_facet Dai, Ning
Tang, Wei Yu
Zhou, Tianshuo
Mathews, David H.
Huang, Liang
contents The tasks of designing RNAs are discrete optimization problems, and several versions of these problems are NP-hard. As an alternative to commonly used local search methods, we formulate these problems as continuous optimization and develop a general framework for this optimization based on a generalization of classical partition function which we call "expected partition function". The basic idea is to start with a distribution over all possible candidate sequences, and extend the objective function from a sequence to a distribution. We then use gradient descent-based optimization methods to improve the extended objective function, and the distribution will gradually shrink towards a one-hot sequence (i.e., a single sequence). As a case study, we consider the important problem of mRNA design with wide applications in vaccines and therapeutics. While the recent work of LinearDesign can efficiently optimize mRNAs for minimum free energy (MFE), optimizing for ensemble free energy is much harder and likely intractable. Our approach can consistently improve over the LinearDesign solution in terms of ensemble free energy, with bigger improvements on longer sequences.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_00037
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Messenger RNA Design via Expected Partition Function and Continuous Optimization
Dai, Ning
Tang, Wei Yu
Zhou, Tianshuo
Mathews, David H.
Huang, Liang
Biomolecules
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
The tasks of designing RNAs are discrete optimization problems, and several versions of these problems are NP-hard. As an alternative to commonly used local search methods, we formulate these problems as continuous optimization and develop a general framework for this optimization based on a generalization of classical partition function which we call "expected partition function". The basic idea is to start with a distribution over all possible candidate sequences, and extend the objective function from a sequence to a distribution. We then use gradient descent-based optimization methods to improve the extended objective function, and the distribution will gradually shrink towards a one-hot sequence (i.e., a single sequence). As a case study, we consider the important problem of mRNA design with wide applications in vaccines and therapeutics. While the recent work of LinearDesign can efficiently optimize mRNAs for minimum free energy (MFE), optimizing for ensemble free energy is much harder and likely intractable. Our approach can consistently improve over the LinearDesign solution in terms of ensemble free energy, with bigger improvements on longer sequences.
title Messenger RNA Design via Expected Partition Function and Continuous Optimization
topic Biomolecules
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00037