Learning residue level protein dynamics with multiscale Gaussians

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bafna, Mihir, Jing, Bowen, Berger, Bonnie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bafna, Mihir
Jing, Bowen
Berger, Bonnie
author_facet Bafna, Mihir
Jing, Bowen
Berger, Bonnie
contents Many methods have been developed to predict static protein structures, however understanding the dynamics of protein structure is essential for elucidating biological function. While molecular dynamics (MD) simulations remain the in silico gold standard, its high computational cost limits scalability. We present DynaProt, a lightweight, SE(3)-invariant framework that predicts rich descriptors of protein dynamics directly from static structures. By casting the problem through the lens of multivariate Gaussians, DynaProt estimates dynamics at two complementary scales: (1) per-residue marginal anisotropy as $3 \times 3$ covariance matrices capturing local flexibility, and (2) joint scalar covariances encoding pairwise dynamic coupling across residues. From these dynamics outputs, DynaProt achieves high accuracy in predicting residue-level flexibility (RMSF) and, remarkably, enables reasonable reconstruction of the full covariance matrix for fast ensemble generation. Notably, it does so using orders of magnitude fewer parameters than prior methods. Our results highlight the potential of direct protein dynamics prediction as a scalable alternative to existing methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_01038
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning residue level protein dynamics with multiscale Gaussians
Bafna, Mihir
Jing, Bowen
Berger, Bonnie
Biomolecules
Machine Learning
Many methods have been developed to predict static protein structures, however understanding the dynamics of protein structure is essential for elucidating biological function. While molecular dynamics (MD) simulations remain the in silico gold standard, its high computational cost limits scalability. We present DynaProt, a lightweight, SE(3)-invariant framework that predicts rich descriptors of protein dynamics directly from static structures. By casting the problem through the lens of multivariate Gaussians, DynaProt estimates dynamics at two complementary scales: (1) per-residue marginal anisotropy as $3 \times 3$ covariance matrices capturing local flexibility, and (2) joint scalar covariances encoding pairwise dynamic coupling across residues. From these dynamics outputs, DynaProt achieves high accuracy in predicting residue-level flexibility (RMSF) and, remarkably, enables reasonable reconstruction of the full covariance matrix for fast ensemble generation. Notably, it does so using orders of magnitude fewer parameters than prior methods. Our results highlight the potential of direct protein dynamics prediction as a scalable alternative to existing methods.
title Learning residue level protein dynamics with multiscale Gaussians
topic Biomolecules
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01038