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Main Authors: Qiu, Zijie, Wei, Jiaqi, Zhang, Xiang, Xu, Sheng, Zou, Kai, Jin, Zhi, Gao, Zhiqiang, Dong, Nanqing, Sun, Siqi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17552
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author Qiu, Zijie
Wei, Jiaqi
Zhang, Xiang
Xu, Sheng
Zou, Kai
Jin, Zhi
Gao, Zhiqiang
Dong, Nanqing
Sun, Siqi
author_facet Qiu, Zijie
Wei, Jiaqi
Zhang, Xiang
Xu, Sheng
Zou, Kai
Jin, Zhi
Gao, Zhiqiang
Dong, Nanqing
Sun, Siqi
contents De novo peptide sequencing is a critical task in proteomics. However, the performance of current deep learning-based methods is limited by the inherent complexity of mass spectrometry data and the heterogeneous distribution of noise signals, leading to data-specific biases. We present RankNovo, the first deep reranking framework that enhances de novo peptide sequencing by leveraging the complementary strengths of multiple sequencing models. RankNovo employs a list-wise reranking approach, modeling candidate peptides as multiple sequence alignments and utilizing axial attention to extract informative features across candidates. Additionally, we introduce two new metrics, PMD (Peptide Mass Deviation) and RMD (residual Mass Deviation), which offer delicate supervision by quantifying mass differences between peptides at both the sequence and residue levels. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RankNovo not only surpasses its base models used to generate training candidates for reranking pre-training, but also sets a new state-of-the-art benchmark. Moreover, RankNovo exhibits strong zero-shot generalization to unseen models whose generations were not exposed during training, highlighting its robustness and potential as a universal reranking framework for peptide sequencing. Our work presents a novel reranking strategy that fundamentally challenges existing single-model paradigms and advances the frontier of accurate de novo sequencing. Our source code is provided on GitHub.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_17552
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Universal Biological Sequence Reranking for Improved De Novo Peptide Sequencing
Qiu, Zijie
Wei, Jiaqi
Zhang, Xiang
Xu, Sheng
Zou, Kai
Jin, Zhi
Gao, Zhiqiang
Dong, Nanqing
Sun, Siqi
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
De novo peptide sequencing is a critical task in proteomics. However, the performance of current deep learning-based methods is limited by the inherent complexity of mass spectrometry data and the heterogeneous distribution of noise signals, leading to data-specific biases. We present RankNovo, the first deep reranking framework that enhances de novo peptide sequencing by leveraging the complementary strengths of multiple sequencing models. RankNovo employs a list-wise reranking approach, modeling candidate peptides as multiple sequence alignments and utilizing axial attention to extract informative features across candidates. Additionally, we introduce two new metrics, PMD (Peptide Mass Deviation) and RMD (residual Mass Deviation), which offer delicate supervision by quantifying mass differences between peptides at both the sequence and residue levels. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RankNovo not only surpasses its base models used to generate training candidates for reranking pre-training, but also sets a new state-of-the-art benchmark. Moreover, RankNovo exhibits strong zero-shot generalization to unseen models whose generations were not exposed during training, highlighting its robustness and potential as a universal reranking framework for peptide sequencing. Our work presents a novel reranking strategy that fundamentally challenges existing single-model paradigms and advances the frontier of accurate de novo sequencing. Our source code is provided on GitHub.
title Universal Biological Sequence Reranking for Improved De Novo Peptide Sequencing
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17552