ProtRLSearch: A Multi-Round Multimodal Protein Search Agent with Large Language Models Trained via Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Congying, Li, Taihao, Huang, Ming, Wei, Xingyuan, Liu, Peipei, Shen, Yiqing, Mao, Yanxu, Cui, Tiehan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914363066023936
author Liu, Congying
Li, Taihao
Huang, Ming
Wei, Xingyuan
Liu, Peipei
Shen, Yiqing
Mao, Yanxu
Cui, Tiehan
author_facet Liu, Congying
Li, Taihao
Huang, Ming
Wei, Xingyuan
Liu, Peipei
Shen, Yiqing
Mao, Yanxu
Cui, Tiehan
contents Protein analysis tasks arising in healthcare settings often require accurate reasoning under protein sequence constraints, involving tasks such as functional interpretation of disease-related variants, protein-level analysis for clinical research, and similar scenarios. To address such tasks, search agents are introduced to search protein-related information, providing support for disease-related variant analysis and protein function reasoning in protein-centric inference. However, such search agents are mostly limited to single-round, text-only modality search, which prevents the protein sequence modality from being incorporated as a multimodal input into the search decision-making process. Meanwhile, their reliance on reinforcement learning (RL) supervision that focuses solely on the final answer results in a lack of search process constraints, making deviations in keyword selection and reasoning directions difficult to identify and correct in a timely manner. To address these limitations, we propose ProtRLSearch, a multi-round protein search agent trained with multi-dimensional reward based RL, which jointly leverages protein sequence and text as multimodal inputs during real-time search to produce high quality reports. To evaluate the ability of models to integrate protein sequence information and text-based multimodal inputs in realistic protein query settings, we construct ProtMCQs, a benchmark of 3,000 multiple choice questions (MCQs) organized into three difficulty levels. The benchmark evaluates protein query tasks that range from sequence constrained reasoning about protein function and phenotype changes to comprehensive protein reasoning that integrates multi-dimensional sequence features with signal pathways and regulatory networks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_01464
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ProtRLSearch: A Multi-Round Multimodal Protein Search Agent with Large Language Models Trained via Reinforcement Learning
Liu, Congying
Li, Taihao
Huang, Ming
Wei, Xingyuan
Liu, Peipei
Shen, Yiqing
Mao, Yanxu
Cui, Tiehan
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Protein analysis tasks arising in healthcare settings often require accurate reasoning under protein sequence constraints, involving tasks such as functional interpretation of disease-related variants, protein-level analysis for clinical research, and similar scenarios. To address such tasks, search agents are introduced to search protein-related information, providing support for disease-related variant analysis and protein function reasoning in protein-centric inference. However, such search agents are mostly limited to single-round, text-only modality search, which prevents the protein sequence modality from being incorporated as a multimodal input into the search decision-making process. Meanwhile, their reliance on reinforcement learning (RL) supervision that focuses solely on the final answer results in a lack of search process constraints, making deviations in keyword selection and reasoning directions difficult to identify and correct in a timely manner. To address these limitations, we propose ProtRLSearch, a multi-round protein search agent trained with multi-dimensional reward based RL, which jointly leverages protein sequence and text as multimodal inputs during real-time search to produce high quality reports. To evaluate the ability of models to integrate protein sequence information and text-based multimodal inputs in realistic protein query settings, we construct ProtMCQs, a benchmark of 3,000 multiple choice questions (MCQs) organized into three difficulty levels. The benchmark evaluates protein query tasks that range from sequence constrained reasoning about protein function and phenotype changes to comprehensive protein reasoning that integrates multi-dimensional sequence features with signal pathways and regulatory networks.
title ProtRLSearch: A Multi-Round Multimodal Protein Search Agent with Large Language Models Trained via Reinforcement Learning
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01464