Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40180946›Full record

ArticleNature communications2025

Protein sequence modelling with Bayesian flow networks.

Timothy Atkinson, Thomas D Barrett, Scott Cameron, Bora Guloglu, Matthew Greenig, Charlie B Tan, Louis Robinson, Alex Graves, Liviu Copoiu, Alexandre Laterre

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Recombinant Protein Drugs: A 2025 Update.BioDrugs : clinical immunotherapeutics, biopharmaceuticals and gene therapy · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors.

Timothy Atkinson *InstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5036-3358
Thomas D Barrett *InstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England. t.barrett@instadeep.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6241-3028
Scott CameronInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Bora GulogluInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4180-4940
Matthew GreenigInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Charlie B TanInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Louis RobinsonInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Alex GravesInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Liviu CopoiuInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.
Alexandre LaterreInstaDeep, 5 Merchant Square, London, W2 1AY, England.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Exploring the vast and largely uncharted territory of amino acid sequences is crucial for understanding complex protein functions and the engineering of novel therapeutic proteins. Whilst generative machine learning has advanced protein sequence modelling, no existing approach is proficient in both unconditional and conditional generation. In this work, we propose that Bayesian Flow Networks (BFNs), a recently introduced framework for generative modelling, can address these challenges. We present ProtBFN, a 650M parameter model trained on protein sequences curated from UniProtKB, which generates natural-like, diverse, structurally coherent, and novel protein sequences, significantly outperforming leading autoregressive and discrete diffusion models. Further, we fine-tune ProtBFN on heavy chains from the Observed Antibody Space to obtain an antibody-specific model, AbBFN, which we use to evaluate zero-shot conditional generation capabilities. AbBFN is found to be competitive with or better than antibody-specific BERT-style models when applied to predicting individual framework or complimentary determining regions.

Indexed as

ProteinsSequence Analysis, ProteinAlgorithmsAmino Acid SequenceBayes TheoremComputational BiologyHumansMachine LearningModels, MolecularProteins

Identifiers

PMID40180946
PMCPMC11968962

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.