Cited by 17RNA and protein synthesis mechanismsProtein Structure and DynamicsRNA regulation and disease

Deep generalizable prediction of RNA secondary structure via base pair motif energy

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Zhu, Heqin, Tang, Fenghe, Quan, Quan, Chen, Ke, Xiong, Peng, Zhou, S. Kevin·2025·Nature Communications

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Abstract

Abstract Deep learning methods have demonstrated great performance for RNA secondary structure prediction. However, generalizability is a common unsolved issue on unseen out-of-distribution RNA families, which hinders further improvement of the accuracy and robustness of deep learning methods. Here we construct a base pair motif library that enumerates the complete space of the locally adjacent three-neighbor base pair and records the thermodynamic energy of corresponding base pair motifs through de novo modeling of tertiary structures, and we further develop a deep learning approach for RNA secondary structure prediction, named BPfold, which learns relationship between RNA sequence and the energy map of base pair motif. Experiments on sequence-wise and family-wise datasets have demonstrated the great superiority of BPfold compared to other state-of-the-art approaches in accuracy and generalizability. We hope this work contributes to integrating physical priors and deep learning methods for the further discovery of RNA structures and functionalities.

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Authors
Zhu, H., Tang, F., Quan, Q., Chen, K., Xiong, P., & Zhou, S. K.
Affiliations
  • University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Corresponding author
  • Xiong, Peng
  • Zhou, S. Kevin
Venue
Nature Communications
Published
2025-07-01
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
5856-5856
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4411882193
Cited by
17
References
66
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 8
FWCI
5.11
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Research Square (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
National Natural Science Foundation of China (32370581, 62271465)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA regulation and disease
Keywords
RNA secondary structure prediction, thermodynamic energy, out-of-distribution generalization, RNA tertiary structure, physical priors, sequence-structure relationship, RNA families
MeSH terms
Deep Learning, Nucleic Acid Conformation, RNA, Thermodynamics, Computational Biology, Base Pairing, Nucleotide Motifs

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