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Hwang Y, Cornman AL, Kellogg EH, Ovchinnikov S, Girguis PR. Genomic language model predicts protein co-regulation and function. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2880. [PMID: 38570504 PMCID: PMC10991518 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46947-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2023] [Accepted: 03/13/2024] [Indexed: 04/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Deciphering the relationship between a gene and its genomic context is fundamental to understanding and engineering biological systems. Machine learning has shown promise in learning latent relationships underlying the sequence-structure-function paradigm from massive protein sequence datasets. However, to date, limited attempts have been made in extending this continuum to include higher order genomic context information. Evolutionary processes dictate the specificity of genomic contexts in which a gene is found across phylogenetic distances, and these emergent genomic patterns can be leveraged to uncover functional relationships between gene products. Here, we train a genomic language model (gLM) on millions of metagenomic scaffolds to learn the latent functional and regulatory relationships between genes. gLM learns contextualized protein embeddings that capture the genomic context as well as the protein sequence itself, and encode biologically meaningful and functionally relevant information (e.g. enzymatic function, taxonomy). Our analysis of the attention patterns demonstrates that gLM is learning co-regulated functional modules (i.e. operons). Our findings illustrate that gLM's unsupervised deep learning of the metagenomic corpus is an effective and promising approach to encode functional semantics and regulatory syntax of genes in their genomic contexts and uncover complex relationships between genes in a genomic region.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yunha Hwang
- Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
| | | | - Elizabeth H Kellogg
- Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
- Department of Structural Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA
| | - Sergey Ovchinnikov
- John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellowship Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
- Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
| | - Peter R Girguis
- Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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2
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Roy G, Prifti E, Belda E, Zucker JD. Deep learning methods in metagenomics: a review. Microb Genom 2024; 10. [PMID: 38630611 DOI: 10.1099/mgen.0.001231] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/19/2024] Open
Abstract
The ever-decreasing cost of sequencing and the growing potential applications of metagenomics have led to an unprecedented surge in data generation. One of the most prevalent applications of metagenomics is the study of microbial environments, such as the human gut. The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in human health, providing vital information for patient diagnosis and prognosis. However, analysing metagenomic data remains challenging due to several factors, including reference catalogues, sparsity and compositionality. Deep learning (DL) enables novel and promising approaches that complement state-of-the-art microbiome pipelines. DL-based methods can address almost all aspects of microbiome analysis, including novel pathogen detection, sequence classification, patient stratification and disease prediction. Beyond generating predictive models, a key aspect of these methods is also their interpretability. This article reviews DL approaches in metagenomics, including convolutional networks, autoencoders and attention-based models. These methods aggregate contextualized data and pave the way for improved patient care and a better understanding of the microbiome's key role in our health.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gaspar Roy
- IRD, Sorbonne University, UMMISCO, 32 avenue Henry Varagnat, Bondy Cedex, France
| | - Edi Prifti
- IRD, Sorbonne University, UMMISCO, 32 avenue Henry Varagnat, Bondy Cedex, France
- Sorbonne University, INSERM, Nutriomics, 91 bvd de l'hopital, 75013 Paris, France
| | - Eugeni Belda
- IRD, Sorbonne University, UMMISCO, 32 avenue Henry Varagnat, Bondy Cedex, France
- Sorbonne University, INSERM, Nutriomics, 91 bvd de l'hopital, 75013 Paris, France
| | - Jean-Daniel Zucker
- IRD, Sorbonne University, UMMISCO, 32 avenue Henry Varagnat, Bondy Cedex, France
- Sorbonne University, INSERM, Nutriomics, 91 bvd de l'hopital, 75013 Paris, France
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3
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Kim YA, Mousavi K, Yazdi A, Zwierzyna M, Cardinali M, Fox D, Peel T, Coller J, Aggarwal K, Maruggi G. Computational design of mRNA vaccines. Vaccine 2024; 42:1831-1840. [PMID: 37479613 DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.07.024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2023] [Revised: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 07/23/2023]
Abstract
mRNA technology has emerged as a successful vaccine platform that offered a swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Accumulating evidence shows that vaccine efficacy, thermostability, and other important properties, are largely impacted by intrinsic properties of the mRNA molecule, such as RNA sequence and structure, both of which can be optimized. Designing mRNA sequence for vaccines presents a combinatorial problem due to an extremely large selection space. For instance, due to the degeneracy of the genetic code, there are over 10632 possible mRNA sequences that could encode the spike protein, the COVID-19 vaccines' target. Moreover, designing different elements of the mRNA sequence simultaneously against multiple objectives such as translational efficiency, reduced reactogenicity, and improved stability requires an efficient and sophisticated optimization strategy. Recently, there has been a growing interest in utilizing computational tools to redesign mRNA sequences to improve vaccine characteristics and expedite discovery timelines. In this review, we explore important biophysical features of mRNA to be considered for vaccine design and discuss how computational approaches can be applied to rapidly design mRNA sequences with desirable characteristics.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Jeff Coller
- Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
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4
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Yang J, Li FZ, Arnold FH. Opportunities and Challenges for Machine Learning-Assisted Enzyme Engineering. ACS CENTRAL SCIENCE 2024; 10:226-241. [PMID: 38435522 PMCID: PMC10906252 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.3c01275] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2023] [Revised: 12/26/2023] [Accepted: 01/16/2024] [Indexed: 03/05/2024]
Abstract
Enzymes can be engineered at the level of their amino acid sequences to optimize key properties such as expression, stability, substrate range, and catalytic efficiency-or even to unlock new catalytic activities not found in nature. Because the search space of possible proteins is vast, enzyme engineering usually involves discovering an enzyme starting point that has some level of the desired activity followed by directed evolution to improve its "fitness" for a desired application. Recently, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a powerful tool to complement this empirical process. ML models can contribute to (1) starting point discovery by functional annotation of known protein sequences or generating novel protein sequences with desired functions and (2) navigating protein fitness landscapes for fitness optimization by learning mappings between protein sequences and their associated fitness values. In this Outlook, we explain how ML complements enzyme engineering and discuss its future potential to unlock improved engineering outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jason Yang
- Division
of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
| | - Francesca-Zhoufan Li
- Division
of Biology and Biological Engineering, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
| | - Frances H. Arnold
- Division
of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
- Division
of Biology and Biological Engineering, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
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5
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Yue T, Wang Y, Zhang L, Gu C, Xue H, Wang W, Lyu Q, Dun Y. Deep Learning for Genomics: From Early Neural Nets to Modern Large Language Models. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:15858. [PMID: 37958843 PMCID: PMC10649223 DOI: 10.3390/ijms242115858] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2023] [Revised: 10/24/2023] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 11/15/2023] Open
Abstract
The data explosion driven by advancements in genomic research, such as high-throughput sequencing techniques, is constantly challenging conventional methods used in genomics. In parallel with the urgent demand for robust algorithms, deep learning has succeeded in various fields such as vision, speech, and text processing. Yet genomics entails unique challenges to deep learning, since we expect a superhuman intelligence that explores beyond our knowledge to interpret the genome from deep learning. A powerful deep learning model should rely on the insightful utilization of task-specific knowledge. In this paper, we briefly discuss the strengths of different deep learning models from a genomic perspective so as to fit each particular task with proper deep learning-based architecture, and we remark on practical considerations of developing deep learning architectures for genomics. We also provide a concise review of deep learning applications in various aspects of genomic research and point out current challenges and potential research directions for future genomics applications. We believe the collaborative use of ever-growing diverse data and the fast iteration of deep learning models will continue to contribute to the future of genomics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tianwei Yue
- School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; (Y.W.); (L.Z.); (W.W.)
| | - Yuanxin Wang
- School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; (Y.W.); (L.Z.); (W.W.)
| | - Longxiang Zhang
- School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; (Y.W.); (L.Z.); (W.W.)
| | - Chunming Gu
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA;
| | - Haoru Xue
- The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA;
| | - Wenping Wang
- School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; (Y.W.); (L.Z.); (W.W.)
| | - Qi Lyu
- Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA;
| | - Yujie Dun
- School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China;
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Moor M, Banerjee O, Abad ZSH, Krumholz HM, Leskovec J, Topol EJ, Rajpurkar P. Foundation models for generalist medical artificial intelligence. Nature 2023; 616:259-265. [PMID: 37045921 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05881-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 159] [Impact Index Per Article: 159.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2022] [Accepted: 02/22/2023] [Indexed: 04/14/2023]
Abstract
The exceptionally rapid development of highly flexible, reusable artificial intelligence (AI) models is likely to usher in newfound capabilities in medicine. We propose a new paradigm for medical AI, which we refer to as generalist medical AI (GMAI). GMAI models will be capable of carrying out a diverse set of tasks using very little or no task-specific labelled data. Built through self-supervision on large, diverse datasets, GMAI will flexibly interpret different combinations of medical modalities, including data from imaging, electronic health records, laboratory results, genomics, graphs or medical text. Models will in turn produce expressive outputs such as free-text explanations, spoken recommendations or image annotations that demonstrate advanced medical reasoning abilities. Here we identify a set of high-impact potential applications for GMAI and lay out specific technical capabilities and training datasets necessary to enable them. We expect that GMAI-enabled applications will challenge current strategies for regulating and validating AI devices for medicine and will shift practices associated with the collection of large medical datasets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael Moor
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Oishi Banerjee
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Zahra Shakeri Hossein Abad
- Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Harlan M Krumholz
- Yale University School of Medicine, Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Jure Leskovec
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Eric J Topol
- Scripps Research Translational Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.
| | - Pranav Rajpurkar
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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