Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42076825›Full record

ArticleProteins2026

Ankh-Score Produces Better Sequence Alignments Than AlphaFold3.

Julia Malec, Karina Rusen, G Brian Golding, Lucian Ilie

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proteins, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing 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

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Protein embeddings and local alignments.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2026
    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

4 authors.

Julia MalecDepartment of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Karina RusenSchool of Rehabilitation Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
G Brian GoldingDepartment of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Lucian IlieDepartment of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery RGPIN-2020-05733Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery RGPIN-2021-03978
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Protein sequence alignment is one of the most fundamental procedures in bioinformatics. Due to its many downstream applications, improvements to this procedure are of great importance. We consider two revolutionary concepts that emerged recently as candidates for improving the state-of-the-art alignment methods: AlphaFold and protein language models such as Ankh, ProtT5, or ESM-C. Alignment improvements can come from the structural alignment of AlphaFold-predicted structures or the scoring based on the similarity of protein embeddings produced by the protein language models. Thorough comparison on many domains from BAliBASE and CDD demonstrates that the Ankh-score method produces much better sequence alignments than the structural alignments using US-align of AlphaFold3-predicted structures. Both are better than the traditional method using BLOSUM matrices. This suggests that Ankh embeddings may possess certain information that is not available in the AlphaFold3-predicted structures. The alignment software is freely available as a web server at e-score.csd.uwo.ca and as source code at github.com/lucian-ilie/E-score.

Indexed as

Computational BiologyProteinsSequence AlignmentSoftwareAlgorithmsAmino Acid SequenceDatabases, ProteinModels, MolecularProtein FoldingSequence Analysis, ProteinProteinsAlphaFoldAnkhprotein embeddingprotein language modelprotein sequence alignmentUS‐align

Identifiers

PMID42076825
PMCPMC13539653

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
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.