Jul 2026· Journal of Molecular Biology· Vol 438, pp.
169949
· 0 citations· 92 references
Medicine
TL;DR
Addressing and predicting ligand-binding sites in protein structures, as well as the prediction of reliable structures of proteins interacting with other proteins, will be pivotal for fully details of structural mechanisms and dynamics.
Abstract
The ability to understand proteins and their behaviors has been drastically improved by major successes in structure prediction and the appearance of Large Protein Language Models. The speed with which Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence are now affecting computational protein studies is remarkable, but there are now many opportunities for further rapid progress with applications of these methods. Rapid gains are likely to come from studies using the approaches identified in this perspective. Addressing and predicting ligand-binding sites in protein structures, as well as the prediction of reliable structures of proteins interacting with other proteins, will be pivotal for fully details of structural mechanisms and dynamics. The prediction of multi-state protein ensembles, conformational transitions, dynamics of large protein complexes, and integration with experimental data is likely to happen quickly.
This mini review traces the evolution of AI-driven methods in protein research, from early residue-contact prediction using coevolutionary information to transformative breakthroughs, the rise of protein language models (PLMs), and the emerging era of generative design and functional modeling.
Guodong Min, Huan Peng· Methods in molecular biology· 0 citations
This framework provides a clearer understanding of how methodological shifts have shaped the capabilities, limitations, and practical roles of recent models.
Wengan He, Yongsheng Luo, Lihong Jiang et al.· 0 citations
A systematic NMR-characterized dataset of mutants of the GA/GB model fold-switching system is presented and it is found that this benchmark revealed variable and position-dependent performance across methods, with certain AlphaFold2-based algorithms able to predict mutant effects at individual sites, indicating some understanding of physical effects of residue substitutions.
Nathaniel R. Felbinger, K. Carillo, Yihong Chen et al.· bioRxiv· 0 citations
Recent AI advances have enabled protein structure prediction at near-experimental accuracy, largely solving the problem of identifying a dominant conformation from sequence. Many proteins, however, function as dynamic systems populating multiple conformational states with activity emerging from shifts in relative occupancy--an incomplete picture when reduced to one structure. Here, we argue that structure prediction should be reformulated as a state-space inference problem: recovering not one conformation's coordinates but accessible states, their energetic and kinetic relationships, context dependence, and responses to perturbations. We review emerging strategies--deep learning ensemble generators, physics-based simulations, and experimental constraints--and outline a roadmap toward state-space prediction.
Devlina Chakravarty, Justin J. Miller, Da Teng et al.· 0 citations
This thesis examines the integration of machine learning into computational structural biology, with an emphasis on modelling and predicting antibody–antigen interactions. Such interactions are fundamental to numerous biological processes and are central to therapeutic antibody design. Despite recent advances in AI-based protein structure prediction, antibodies remain particularly challenging targets due to the high variability of their complementarity-determining regions, the limited availability of experimental structures, and the lack of strong co-evolutionary signal.
To address these challenges, this work introduces several methodological contributions. In Chapter 2,DeepRank-GNN-esm incorporates embeddings from protein language models to replace computationally expensive evolutionary features, thereby improving both predictive performance and efficiency in scoring protein–protein complexes. In Chapter 3, a modelling pipeline is introduced that employs a flow-matching algorithm to effectively sample the conformational diversity of the antibody CDR-H3 loop. When integrated with ensemble docking, this approach significantly improves the accuracy of antibody–antigen complex modelling compared to existing methods. In Chapter 4, the thesis presents AbTune, a sequence-specific fine-tuning strategy for protein language models that enhances predictive performance across multiple antibody-related tasks, including structure prediction, mutation effect estimation, and binding affinity prediction, while remaining computationally efficient. In Chapter 5, DeepRank-Ab is developed as a geometric deep learning-based scoring function tailored to antibody–antigen complexes, achieving state-of-the-art performance in ranking near-native docking conformations. Chapter 6 summarizes the main findings of the thesis and discusses future research directions.
Collectively, these contributions demonstrate how machine learning can be applied to address key limitations in antibody modelling and to facilitate the rational design of antibody-based therapeutics.