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A General Framework for Injecting BiophysicalPriors into Protein Embeddings

Feldman, J.; Maechler, A.; Wang, D.; Shakhnovich, E.

2026-02-23 bioinformatics
10.64898/2025.12.23.696257 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Accurate {Delta}{Delta}G prediction requires integrating machine learning with biophysical insight. Existing approaches typically prioritize one while neglecting the other. We introduce an encoder-agnostic framework that injects interpretable biophysical priors into residue-level deep learning representations via cross-embedding attention. ProtBFF consistently improves performance under homology-based-clustering evaluation and enables general-purpose encoders to surpass state-of-the-art specialized models or larger models. Our results show that integrating simple, mechanistic priors into pretrained representations yields more trust-worthy predictors, offering a practical solution for broader protein engineering applications. Codegithub.com/Jfeldman34/ProtBFF

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