ESMFold2 👀

🚀 Excited to share our new work: Absolute Stability Predictor! 📊: forms.gle/4ZnXZSnTBvay... Built the MGnify Stability Dataset (1.8M+ measurements) and developed stability prediction models, together with @grocklin.bsky.social @KotaroTsuboyama, @sokrypton.org and teams.

Congrats to @ulad-litvin.bsky.social on winning 2nd best talk at #Vibiom2026! @cvrinfo.bsky.social 🏅

Fifth and final @cvrinfo.bsky.social talk at ViBioM 2026. @ulad-litvin.bsky.social presenting viro3d.cvr.gla.ac.uk and other applications of alphafold in virology.

New work: Our earlier work showed that Foldseek characters could be adapted for phylogenetic alignment, treating each character as an evolutionary state. That part holds but there's a hidden assumption baked in that needed unpacking. So lets do that.🧵 #StructuralPhylogenetics #Evolution #Protein

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

Had a great time at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference! I gave a talk on modelling protein-protein interactions with AlphaFold3. A few lessons learned 🧬🧵

Some bat alphacoronaviruses can exploit an entirely different receptor to enter human cells. This could lead to crossover events could be the first step in future epidemics, though we are not there yet and there would be many more barriers to overcome also. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉Excited to share our new preprint! TIR domains from diverse animals, including human TLR4, are catalytically active and produce cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR). This enzymatic activity is widespread in animals and conserved across the tree of life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We introduce ConforNets, a mechanism for conformational control in AlphaFold3 models - SoTA at producing diverse conformations on every multistate benchmark (N=104) - Novel capability: transfer state from one protein to another Outperforms BioEmu, ConforMix and AFsample3 🧵1/8

"The selfish ribosome" paper is now published in @plosbiology.org . Have a look! Many thanks to the editors and reviewers! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

The CASP experiment is about to start - and is still short on challenging prediction targets. Ligand complexes, RNA, …

Having fantastic time at @microbiologysociety.org annual conference in Belfast. Just gave a short talk on predicting protein-protein interactions with AlphaFold3 🔮 and all the tricks we’ve applied to make it work for challenging targets 👾

45 novel protein folds in the updated AFESM (AFDB + ESMatlas) manuscript: • 12 high-confidence folds in AFESM • 33 by ColabFold-repredicting 2.3M low-quality domains We show AFDB captures most domains already and ESMfold struggles with novelty 🌏 afesm.foldseek.com 📄 biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📣Huge preprint 🔔 Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

How diverse is bacterial immunity ? We report in @science.org how language models allowed us to predict 2.4M antiphage proteins spanning >23K novel potential systems. 👏 @emordret.bsky.social, @alexhv.bsky.social & al doi.org/10.1126/scie... Explore them here defensefinder.mdmlab.fr/wiki/refseq_...

How can we study the function of nucleotide-based #SecondMessengers? @oliveiramann.bsky.social presented her group's exciting findings in this field at #Biochemistry2026. She e.g. presented the #cryoEM structure of OAS2, which has key #antiviral functions. linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...

Kieran et al. trained a generative protein binder design model. The training is based on Teddymer, a dataset developed by @sooyoung-cha.bsky.social. By treating monomer domains as multimers and clustering them with Foldseek, she created a set that allowed Complexa to learn. 💾 teddymer.foldseek.com

You asked, we listened. Millions of AI-predicted protein complex structures are now available in the #AlphaFold Database. This spans homodimers from 20 of the most studied species, including humans, as well as the World Health Organization’s priority pathogens list. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

AlphaFold database has entered the era of complexes. Together with NVIDIA, DeepMind and EBI, we use ColabFold, OpenFold and MMseqs2-GPU to predict ~31 million complexes (homo & hetro-dimers) resulting in 1.8 million high-quality predictions 📄 research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/ass... 🌐 alphafold.ebi.ac.uk

Having a hard time keeping up with the fast-moving field of origin of eukaryotes/Asgards archaea? Our new perspective article can help, we review the status of research over the last decade and where it's going. The archaeal roots of eukaryotic life www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New OpenFold3 preview out! (OF3p2) It closes the gap to AlphaFold3 for most modalities. Most critically, we're releasing everything, including training sets & configs, making OF3p2 the only current AF3-based model that is functionally trainable & reproducible from scratch🧵1/9

🚨New Influenza Tool🚨 Interested in IAV mutations? Looking for markers of mammalian adaptation? Frustrated by converting between IAV numbering systems? The #Flu-MutationExplorer, a new tool from @cvrbioinfo.bsky.social and @royalvetcollege.bsky.social, is here to help: flu-gdb.cvr.gla.ac.uk (1/n)

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration! Linking below previous thread on our findings

We have started a project trying to predic the interactions/structures of all yeast protein pairs using an AlphaFold pooling approach. We are making the current dataset open and we welcome collaborations. www.evocellnet.com/2026/03/mapp...

🧵 FlashPPI (new model) is live in SeqHub. Proteome-wide PPI prediction in minutes, 2,400x faster than the next best sequence-based method, 4x better predictive performance. How it works: 👇

Predicting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) at proteome scale can take months with co-folding models due to the massive all-vs-all comparisons required. We are excited to announce FlashPPI, a contrastive learning framework that predicts proteome wide physical interfaces in minutes. 1/🧵

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

We are really excited that Euro Evo Devo will take place here in Scotland from the 9th-12th June, at the University of Glasgow! Deadline for Early Bird Registration and Abstract Submission are rapidly approaching in March so do register soon! www.evodevoconference26.com/important-da...

It is almost five years since I first applied AlphaFold to a handful of viral proteins. Today, hundreds of thousands of predictions and many discoveries later, we are delighted to announce the integration of our Viro3D dataset into the @ebi.embl.org and Google DeepMind AlphaFold Database.

🦠 Viro3D and BFVD viral predictions are now available in the AlphaFold database

Our new review about the evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication is out!!! We delve into the various adaptive and non-adaptive forces which shape the fate of gene duplicates uncovered across the last decade through cutting edge experimental and computational techniques

I am excited to share our latest preprint - An evolutionarily divergent herpesvirus with a giant tail. Featuring symmetry breaking and genome annotation from structure using ModelAngelo. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin discuss one of most interesting questions in the field connecting bacterial and animal immunity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Reminder with <2 weeks to deadline:

My time in @martinsteinegger.bsky.social's group is ending, but I’m staying in Korea to build a lab at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine. If you or someone you know is interested in molecular machine learning and open-source bioinformatics, please reach out. I am hiring! mirdita.org

#NatMicroPicks Asgard archaea and the origin of eukaryotes! 🦠 Eukaryotic cellular complexity evolved largely within the Asgard lineage before mitochondrial endosymbiosis and later bacterial gene acquisitions #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Applications to join the Computational Approaches to Early Evolution workshop are still accepted! Do not miss your chance to attend this event full of discussions on the computational methods for studying early life! 🦠💻🧬 forms.oist.jp/form/computa...

How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.nature.com/articles/s41... @bristoluni.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Phold's manuscript is now available @narjournal.bsky.social thanks to @susiegriggo.bsky.social @npbhavya.bsky.social @vijinim.bsky.social @linsalrob.bsky.social @martinsteinegger.bsky.social @milot.bsky.social @eunbelivable.bsky.social & others not on bsky #phagesky academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Our work on the evolution of the regulatory genome of echinoderms is now out in @natecoevo.nature.com. Led by my former PhD Marta Magri, Danila Voronov & Saoirse Foley. Great collaboration of Arnone, Hinman & Maeso labs, started long time ago with our missed José Luis Gomez-Skarmeta: rdcu.be/eXX8l

We've a computational PhD project available AI-DRIVEN DISCOVERY OF VIRUS–HOST MOLECULAR INTERACTIONS www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl... as part of the University of Glasgow's MVLS Futures Themes PhD Programme. Deadline for applications is this Monday, 12th Jan 2026. Please apply!

Thrilled to share the first major preprint from the lab. Viruses are classically viewed as targets of host sensing. Do viruses also sense and respond to the host? We propose viruses may act as “biosensors” of the host signaling state. A thread👇🏾 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm really excited to break up the holiday relaxation time with a new preprint that benchmarks AlphaFold3 (AF3)/“co-folding” methods with 2 new stringent performance tests. Thread below - but first some links: A longer take: fraserlab.com/2025/12/29/k... Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Permanent Research Group Leader Position, Crete, Greece: Interested to assume long-term responsibilities for the Biodiversity Computing Group www.biocomp.gr I have set up in Crete? Apply now via apella.minedu.gov.gr/en/node/5998 (PDF also in English) - for questions email to [email protected]

Join us for interesting discussions at the Computational Approaches to Early Evolution workshop next year in April at OIST in Onna, Okinawa! 🦠💻🧬 Registrations open until January 2nd '26, do not miss it! More info & registration details in the link below! 🔽 www.oist.jp/conference/c...

Excited to share the final version of our study on Nematostella cell type regulatory programs. Part of our @erc.europa.eu StG project, this was a challenging 5-year effort extraodinarily led by @aelek.bsky.social and @martaig.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint led by our MSc student Wenye Li!! 🎉 @systemsvirology.bsky.social What we find is a historic genetic interplay between sarbecoviruses and their horseshoe bat hosts' ACE2 receptor! 🦇 🧵... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint out! Using ~75k environmental OTUs + 77 fossil calibrations, we reconstructed a Proterozoic timeline of eukaryote evolution. Our results show crown eukaryotes were already diversifying >1.6 Ga, long before the first undisputed fossils (~1.05 Ga). 🔗 DOI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...