Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Machine learning

What does a language model know about proteins?

A new approach sheds light on the biological features learned by protein language models, promising greater interpretability for unsupervised sequence learning.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Identifying biological features from protein language models.

References

  1. Simon, E. & Zou, J. Nat. Methods https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02836-7 (2025).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Lin, Z. et al. Science 379, 1123–1130 (2023).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Ruffolo, J. A. & Madani, A. Nat. Biotechnol. 42, 200–202 (2024).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Vig, J. et al. In International Conference on Learning Representations https://openreview.net/forum?id=YWtLZvLmud7 (2021).

  5. Rao, R. et al. In International Conference on Learning Representations https://openreview.net/forum?id=fylclEqgvgd (2021).

  6. Meier, J. et al. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 34, 29287–29303 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Zhang, Z. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 121, e2406285121 (2024).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  8. Cunningham, H. et al. In International Conference on Learning Representations https://openreview.net/forum?id=F76bwRSLeK (2024).

  9. Bhatnagar, A. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.15.649055 (2025).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Simon for insightful discussions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey A. Ruffolo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

All authors are current or former employees, contractors or executives of Profluent Bio Inc. and may hold shares in Profluent Bio Inc.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ruffolo, J.A. What does a language model know about proteins?. Nat Methods (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02837-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02837-6

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing