Beyond Atoms: Enhancing Molecular Pretrained Representations with 3D Space Modeling

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lu, Shuqi, Ji, Xiaohong, Zhang, Bohang, Yao, Lin, Liu, Siyuan, Gao, Zhifeng, Zhang, Linfeng, Ke, Guolin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Lu, Shuqi
Ji, Xiaohong
Zhang, Bohang
Yao, Lin
Liu, Siyuan
Gao, Zhifeng
Zhang, Linfeng
Ke, Guolin
author_facet Lu, Shuqi
Ji, Xiaohong
Zhang, Bohang
Yao, Lin
Liu, Siyuan
Gao, Zhifeng
Zhang, Linfeng
Ke, Guolin
contents Molecular pretrained representations (MPR) has emerged as a powerful approach for addressing the challenge of limited supervised data in applications such as drug discovery and material design. While early MPR methods relied on 1D sequences and 2D graphs, recent advancements have incorporated 3D conformational information to capture rich atomic interactions. However, these prior models treat molecules merely as discrete atom sets, overlooking the space surrounding them. We argue from a physical perspective that only modeling these discrete points is insufficient. We first present a simple yet insightful observation: naively adding randomly sampled virtual points beyond atoms can surprisingly enhance MPR performance. In light of this, we propose a principled framework that incorporates the entire 3D space spanned by molecules. We implement the framework via a novel Transformer-based architecture, dubbed SpaceFormer, with three key components: (1) grid-based space discretization; (2) grid sampling/merging; and (3) efficient 3D positional encoding. Extensive experiments show that SpaceFormer significantly outperforms previous 3D MPR models across various downstream tasks with limited data, validating the benefit of leveraging the additional 3D space beyond atoms in MPR models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_10489
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Atoms: Enhancing Molecular Pretrained Representations with 3D Space Modeling
Lu, Shuqi
Ji, Xiaohong
Zhang, Bohang
Yao, Lin
Liu, Siyuan
Gao, Zhifeng
Zhang, Linfeng
Ke, Guolin
Biomolecules
Machine Learning
Molecular pretrained representations (MPR) has emerged as a powerful approach for addressing the challenge of limited supervised data in applications such as drug discovery and material design. While early MPR methods relied on 1D sequences and 2D graphs, recent advancements have incorporated 3D conformational information to capture rich atomic interactions. However, these prior models treat molecules merely as discrete atom sets, overlooking the space surrounding them. We argue from a physical perspective that only modeling these discrete points is insufficient. We first present a simple yet insightful observation: naively adding randomly sampled virtual points beyond atoms can surprisingly enhance MPR performance. In light of this, we propose a principled framework that incorporates the entire 3D space spanned by molecules. We implement the framework via a novel Transformer-based architecture, dubbed SpaceFormer, with three key components: (1) grid-based space discretization; (2) grid sampling/merging; and (3) efficient 3D positional encoding. Extensive experiments show that SpaceFormer significantly outperforms previous 3D MPR models across various downstream tasks with limited data, validating the benefit of leveraging the additional 3D space beyond atoms in MPR models.
title Beyond Atoms: Enhancing Molecular Pretrained Representations with 3D Space Modeling
topic Biomolecules
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10489