Protein Design with Dynamic Protein Vocabulary

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Nuowei, Kuang, Jiahao, Liu, Yanting, Ji, Tao, Sun, Changzhi, Lan, Man, Wu, Yuanbin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Nuowei
Kuang, Jiahao
Liu, Yanting
Ji, Tao
Sun, Changzhi
Lan, Man
Wu, Yuanbin
author_facet Liu, Nuowei
Kuang, Jiahao
Liu, Yanting
Ji, Tao
Sun, Changzhi
Lan, Man
Wu, Yuanbin
contents Protein design is a fundamental challenge in biotechnology, aiming to design novel sequences with specific functions within the vast space of possible proteins. Recent advances in deep generative models have enabled function-based protein design from textual descriptions, yet struggle with structural plausibility. Inspired by classical protein design methods that leverage natural protein structures, we explore whether incorporating fragments from natural proteins can enhance foldability in generative models. Our empirical results show that even random incorporation of fragments improves foldability. Building on this insight, we introduce ProDVa, a novel protein design approach that integrates a text encoder for functional descriptions, a protein language model for designing proteins, and a fragment encoder to dynamically retrieve protein fragments based on textual functional descriptions. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach effectively designs protein sequences that are both functionally aligned and structurally plausible. Compared to state-of-the-art models, ProDVa achieves comparable function alignment using less than 0.04% of the training data, while designing significantly more well-folded proteins, with the proportion of proteins having pLDDT above 70 increasing by 7.38% and those with PAE below 10 increasing by 9.6%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18966
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Protein Design with Dynamic Protein Vocabulary
Liu, Nuowei
Kuang, Jiahao
Liu, Yanting
Ji, Tao
Sun, Changzhi
Lan, Man
Wu, Yuanbin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Biomolecules
Protein design is a fundamental challenge in biotechnology, aiming to design novel sequences with specific functions within the vast space of possible proteins. Recent advances in deep generative models have enabled function-based protein design from textual descriptions, yet struggle with structural plausibility. Inspired by classical protein design methods that leverage natural protein structures, we explore whether incorporating fragments from natural proteins can enhance foldability in generative models. Our empirical results show that even random incorporation of fragments improves foldability. Building on this insight, we introduce ProDVa, a novel protein design approach that integrates a text encoder for functional descriptions, a protein language model for designing proteins, and a fragment encoder to dynamically retrieve protein fragments based on textual functional descriptions. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach effectively designs protein sequences that are both functionally aligned and structurally plausible. Compared to state-of-the-art models, ProDVa achieves comparable function alignment using less than 0.04% of the training data, while designing significantly more well-folded proteins, with the proportion of proteins having pLDDT above 70 increasing by 7.38% and those with PAE below 10 increasing by 9.6%.
title Protein Design with Dynamic Protein Vocabulary
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Biomolecules
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18966