Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the major techniques in structural biology with over 11,800 protein structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank. NMR can elucidate structures and dynamics of small and medium size proteins in solution, living cells, and solids, but has been limited by the tedious data analysis process. It typically requires weeks or months of manual work of a trained expert to turn NMR measurements into a protein structure. Automation of this process is an open problem, formulated in the field over 30 years ago. Here, we present a solution to this challenge that enables the completely automated analysis of protein NMR data within hours after completing the measurements. Using only NMR spectra and the protein sequence as input, our machine learning-based method, ARTINA, delivers signal positions, resonance assignments, and structures strictly without any human intervention. Tested on a 100-protein benchmark comprising 1329 multidimensional NMR spectra, ARTINA demonstrated its ability to solve structures with 1.44 Å median RMSD to the PDB reference and to identify 91.36% correct NMR resonance assignments. ARTINA can be used by non-experts, red
Single-crystal solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy, which enables detailed analysis of the electronic structures of crystalline molecules, offers a unique opportunity to investigate molecular chirality -- an essential feature with broad implications for understanding the origin and function of life. In this study, we employ single-crystal ssNMR spectroscopy, in combination with X-ray diffraction and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, to examine the electronic structure of 17O nuclei in crystalline forms of alanine enantiomers. Eight magnetically nonequivalent 17O resonances within the unit cell were observed and successfully assigned, and their corresponding NMR tensor parameters were determined. The experimental findings were compared with previous NMR studies as well as with DFT calculations performed in this work. The DFT results not only supported the assignment of crystallographically distinct 17O sites but also revealed previously unobserved antisymmetric components of the chemical shift tensors. This study presents the first comprehensive characterization of 17O NMR tensors in alanine enantiomers and underscores the power of integrating sin
Understanding complex biomolecular mechanisms requires multi-step reasoning across molecular interactions, signaling cascades, and metabolic pathways. While large language models(LLMs) show promise in such tasks, their application to biomolecular problems is hindered by logical inconsistencies and the lack of grounding in domain knowledge. Existing approaches often exacerbate these issues: reasoning steps may deviate from biological facts or fail to capture long mechanistic dependencies. To address these challenges, we propose a Knowledge-Augmented Long-CoT Reasoning framework that integrates LLMs with knowledge graph-based multi-hop reasoning chains. The framework constructs mechanistic chains via guided multi-hop traversal and pruning on the knowledge graph; these chains are then incorporated into supervised fine-tuning to improve factual grounding and further refined with reinforcement learning to enhance reasoning reliability and consistency. Furthermore, to overcome the shortcomings of existing benchmarks, which are often restricted in scale and scope and lack annotations for deep reasoning chains, we introduce PrimeKGQA, a comprehensive benchmark for biomolecular question ans
Biomolecular interactions underpin almost all biological processes, and their rational design is central to programming new biological functions. Generative AI models have emerged as powerful tools for molecular design, yet most remain specialized for individual molecular types and lack fine-grained control over interaction details. Here we present ODesign, an all-atom generative world model for all-to-all biomolecular interaction design. ODesign allows scientists to specify epitopes on arbitrary targets and generate diverse classes of binding partners with fine-grained control. Across entity-, token-, and atom-level benchmarks in the protein modality, ODesign demonstrates superior controllability and performance to modality-specific baselines. Extending beyond proteins, it generalizes to nucleic acid and small-molecule design, enabling interaction types such as protein-binding RNA/DNA and RNA/DNA-binding ligands that were previously inaccessible. By unifying multimodal biomolecular interactions within a single generative framework, ODesign moves toward a general-purpose molecular world model capable of programmable design. ODesign is available at https://odesign.lglab.ac.cn ,
Biomolecular condensates composed of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are vital for proper cellular function, and their dysfunction is associated with diseases including neurodegeneration and cancer. Despite their biological importance, the precise physical mechanisms underlying condensate (dys)function are unclear, in part owing to the difficulties in understanding how biomolecular sequence patterns influence emergent condensate behaviours across relevant length and timescales. Here, through minimal physical modelling, we explain how IDP sequence patterning gives rise to nano-scale organisational heterogeneities in condensates. By applying our coarse-grained molecular-dynamics polymer model, which accounts for steric, attractive, and electrostatic interactions, we systematically quantify and map out the emergent morphological phases resulting from a wide range of sequence patterns. We demonstrate how sequences that enable local coil-to-globule transitions within regions of single polymers - driven by a competition between the preferred crowding densities of different regions in the sequence - also exhibit cluster formation in condensates. Overall, our work provides a conce
Highly accurate biomolecular structure prediction is a key component of developing biomolecular foundation models, and one of the most critical aspects of building foundation models is identifying the recipes for scaling the model. In this work, we present SeedFold, a folding model that successfully scales up the model capacity. Our contributions are threefold: first, we identify an effective width-scaling strategy for the Pairformer to increase representation capacity; second, we introduce a novel linear triangular attention that reduces computational complexity to enable efficient scaling; finally, we construct a large-scale distillation dataset to substantially enlarge the training set. Experiments on FoldBench show that SeedFold outperforms AlphaFold3 on most protein-related tasks.
Understanding and designing biomolecules, such as proteins and small molecules, is central to advancing drug discovery, synthetic biology and enzyme engineering. Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have revolutionized biomolecular research, achieving remarkable accuracy in biomolecular prediction and design. However, a critical gap remains between artificial intelligence's computational capabilities and researchers' intuitive goals, particularly in using natural language to bridge complex tasks with human intentions. Large language models have shown potential to interpret human intentions, yet their application to biomolecular research remains nascent due to challenges including specialized knowledge requirements, multimodal data integration, and semantic alignment between natural language and biomolecules. To address these limitations, we present InstructBioMol, a large language model designed to bridge natural language and biomolecules through a comprehensive any-to-any alignment of natural language, molecules and proteins. This model can integrate multimodal biomolecules as the input, and enable researchers to articulate design goals in natural language, providing bi
Large Language Models (LLMs), with their remarkable task-handling capabilities and innovative outputs, have catalyzed significant advancements across a spectrum of fields. However, their proficiency within specialized domains such as biomolecular studies remains limited. To address this challenge, we introduce Mol-Instructions, a comprehensive instruction dataset designed for the biomolecular domain. Mol-Instructions encompasses three key components: molecule-oriented instructions, protein-oriented instructions, and biomolecular text instructions. Each component aims to improve the understanding and prediction capabilities of LLMs concerning biomolecular features and behaviors. Through extensive instruction tuning experiments on LLMs, we demonstrate the effectiveness of Mol-Instructions in enhancing large models' performance in the intricate realm of biomolecular studies, thus fostering progress in the biomolecular research community. Mol-Instructions is publicly available for ongoing research and will undergo regular updates to enhance its applicability.
Biomolecular condensates constitute a newly recognized form of spatial organization in living cells. Although many condensates are believed to form as a result of phase separation, the physicochemical properties that determine the phase behavior of heterogeneous biomolecular mixtures are only beginning to be explored. Theory and simulation provide invaluable tools for probing the relationship between molecular determinants, such as protein and RNA sequences, and the emergence of phase-separated condensates in such complex environments. This review covers recent advances in the prediction and computational design of biomolecular mixtures that phase-separate into many coexisting phases. First, we review efforts to understand the phase behavior of mixtures with hundreds or thousands of species using theoretical models and statistical approaches. We then describe progress in developing analytical theories and coarse-grained simulation models to predict multiphase condensates with the molecular detail required to make contact with biophysical experiments. We conclude by summarizing the challenges ahead for modeling the inhomogeneous spatial organization of biomolecular mixtures in livin
Single-crystal (SC) NMR spectroscopy is a solid-state NMR method that has been used since the early days of NMR to study the magnitude and orientation of tensorial nuclear spin interactions in solids. This review first presents the field of SC NMR instrumentation, then provides a survey of software for analysis of SC NMR data, and finally it highlights selected applications of SC NMR in various fields of research. The aim of the last part is not to provide a complete review of all SC NMR literature but to provide examples that demonstrate interesting applications of SC NMR.
The development of new superconducting ceramic materials, which maintain the superconductivity at very intense magnetic fields, has prompted the development of a new generation of highly homogeneous high field magnets that has trespassed the magnetic field attainable with the previous generation of instruments. But how can biomolecular NMR benefit from this? In this work, we review a few of the notable applications that, we expect, will be blooming thanks to this newly available technology.
Nuclear magnetic resonance is arguably both the best available quantum technology for implementing simple quantum computing experiments and the worst technology for building large scale quantum computers that has ever been seriously put forward. After a few years of rapid growth, leading to an implementation of Shor's quantum factoring algorithm in a seven-spin system, the field started to reach its natural limits and further progress became challenging. Rather than pursuing more complex algorithms on larger systems, interest has now largely moved into developing techniques for the precise and efficient manipulation of spin states with the aim of developing methods that can be applied in other more scalable technologies and within conventional NMR. However, the user friendliness of NMR implementations means that they remain popular for proof-of-principle demonstrations of simple quantum information protocols.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy plays an essential role in deciphering molecular structure and dynamic behaviors. While AI-enhanced NMR prediction models hold promise, challenges still persist in tasks such as molecular retrieval, isomer recognition, and peak assignment. In response, this paper introduces a novel solution, Multi-Level Multimodal Alignment with Knowledge-Guided Instance-Wise Discrimination (K-M3AID), which establishes correspondences between two heterogeneous modalities: molecular graphs and NMR spectra. K-M3AID employs a dual-coordinated contrastive learning architecture with three key modules: a graph-level alignment module, a node-level alignment module, and a communication channel. Notably, K-M3AID introduces knowledge-guided instance-wise discrimination into contrastive learning within the node-level alignment module. In addition, K-M3AID demonstrates that skills acquired during node-level alignment have a positive impact on graph-level alignment, acknowledging meta-learning as an inherent property. Empirical validation underscores K-M3AID's effectiveness in multiple zero-shot tasks.
The search for evidence of past life on Mars presents a tremendous challenge that requires the usage of very advanced robotic technologies to overcome it. Current digital microscopic imagers and spectrometers used for astrobiological examination suffer from limitations such as insufficient resolution, narrow detection range, and lack of portability. To overcome these challenges, this research study presents modifications to the Phoenix rover to expand its capability for detecting biosignatures on Mars. This paper examines the modifications implemented on the Phoenix rover to enhance its capability to detect a broader spectrum of biosignatures. One of the notable improvements comprises the integration of advanced digital microscopic imagers and spectrometers, enabling high-resolution examination of soil samples. Additionally, the mechanical components of the device have been reinforced to enhance maneuverability and optimize subsurface sampling capabilities. Empirical investigations have demonstrated that Phoenix has the capability to navigate diverse geological environments and procure samples for the purpose of biomolecular analysis. The biomolecular instrumentation and hybrid ana
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has provided a valuable experimental testbed for quantum information processing (QIP). Here, we briefly review the use of nuclear spins as qubits, and discuss the current status of NMR-QIP. Advances in the techniques available for control are described along with the various implementations of quantum algorithms and quantum simulations that have been performed using NMR. The recent application of NMR control techniques to other quantum computing systems are reviewed before concluding with a description of the efforts currently underway to transition to solid state NMR systems that hold promise for scalable architectures.
Biomolecular binding kinetics including the association (kon) and dissociation (koff) rates are critical parameters for therapeutic design of small-molecule drugs, peptides and antibodies. Notably, drug molecule residence time or dissociation rate has been shown to correlate with their efficacies better than binding affinities. A wide range of modeling approaches including quantitative structure-kinetic relationship models, Molecular Dynamics simulations, enhanced sampling and Machine Learning have been developed to explore biomolecular binding and dissociation mechanisms and predict binding kinetic rates. Here, we review recent advances in computational modeling of biomolecular binding kinetics, with an outlook for future improvements.
Virtual screening (VS) is an essential technique for understanding biomolecular interactions, particularly, drug design and discovery. The best-performing VS models depend vitally on three-dimensional (3D) structures, which are not available in general but can be obtained from molecular docking. However, current docking accuracy is relatively low, rendering unreliable VS models. We introduce sequence-based virtual screening (SVS) as a new generation of VS models for modeling biomolecular interactions. The SVS model utilizes advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and optimizes deep $K$-embedding strategies to encode biomolecular interactions without invoking 3D structure-based docking. We demonstrate the state-of-art performance of SVS for four regression datasets involving protein-ligand binding, protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid binding, and ligand inhibition of protein-protein interactions and five classification datasets for the protein-protein interactions in five biological species. SVS has the potential to dramatically change the current practice in drug discovery and protein engineering.
This paper surveys our recent research on quantum information processing by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. We begin with a geometric introduction to the NMR of an ensemble of indistinguishable spins, and then show how this geometric interpretation is contained within an algebra of multispin product operators. This algebra is used throughout the rest of the paper to demonstrate that it provides a facile framework within which to study quantum information processing more generally. The implementation of quantum algorithms by NMR depends upon the availability of special kinds of mixed states, called pseudo-pure states, and we consider a number of different methods for preparing these states, along with analyses of how they scale with the number of spins. The quantum-mechanical nature of processes involving such macroscopic pseudo-pure states also is a matter of debate, and in order to discuss this issue in concrete terms we present the results of NMR experiments which constitute a macroscopic analogue Hardy's paradox. Finally, a detailed product operator description is given of recent NMR experiments which demonstrate a three-bit quantum error correcting code, using fi
Decomposition of biomolecular reaction networks into pathways is a powerful approach to the analysis of metabolic and signalling networks. Current approaches based on analysis of the stoichiometric matrix reveal information about steady-state mass flows (reaction rates) through the network. In this work we show how pathway analysis of biomolecular networks can be extended using an energy-based approach to provide information about energy flows through the network. This energy-based approach is developed using the engineering-inspired bond graph methodology to represent biomolecular reaction networks. The approach is introduced using glycolysis as an exemplar; and is then applied to analyse the efficiency of free energy transduction in a biomolecular cycle model of a transporter protein (Sodium-Glucose Transport Protein 1, SGLT1). The overall aim of our work is to present a framework for modelling and analysis of biomolecular reactions and processes which considers energy flows and losses as well as mass transport.
The period and amplitude of biomolecular oscillators are functionally important properties in multiple contexts. For a biomolecular oscillator, the overall constraints in how tuning of amplitude affects period, and vice versa, are generally unclear. Here we investigate this co-variation of the period and amplitude in mathematical models of biomolecular oscillators using both simulations and analytical approximations. We computed the amplitude-period co-variation of eleven benchmark biomolecular oscillators as their parameters were individually varied around a nominal value, classifying the various co-variation patterns such as a simultaneous increase/ decrease in period and amplitude. Next, we repeated the classification using a power norm-based amplitude metric, to account for the amplitudes of the many biomolecular species that may be part of the oscillations, finding largely similar trends. Finally, we calculate "scaling laws" of period-amplitude co-variation for a subset of these benchmark oscillators finding that as the approximated period increases, the upper bound of the amplitude increases, or reaches a constant value. Based on these results, we discuss the effect of differ