用生物机制引导大模型,精准预测基因调控序列活性并解释原因。
Biological Reasoning-Informed Regression for Interpretable Regulatory DNA Activity Prediction

- 构建含生物机制的结构化数据格式,让大模型理解调控逻辑。
- 在三种细胞类型上超越现有模型,预测准确率显著提升。
- 适合生物学家用于可解释的基因元件设计与功能分析。
DNA顺式调控元件(CREs)如增强子控制基因表达水平。从序列准确预测调控活性具有重要价值但极具挑战,需理解复杂的生物调控过程。现有方法多以黑箱方式从序列回归活性评分,限制了可解释性与性能。尽管大语言模型(LLMs)受益于显式推理,但直接输入原始DNA序列效果不佳。本文提出R3LM框架,通过结构化生物知识引导LLM进行推理驱动的回归。我们设计了基于生物学的结构化数据格式,提升LLM对调控信息的理解,并构建了首个关联DNA序列、活性评分与机制推理轨迹的数据集CRE-ReasonBench。通过两阶段训练:先教授LLM在结构化生物信息上的推理,再进行回归,R3LM在三种细胞类型上的增强子预测中达到最先进性能,优于使用原始序列输入的LLMs及专用DNA模型,同时提供可解释的机制说明。我们期望R3LM可作为可解释的奖励模型,有效辅助生物学家进行CRE设计。代码已开源:https://github.com/DuanYi516/R3LM。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
DNA cis-regulatory elements (CREs) such as enhancers control gene expression levels. Accurately predicting regulatory activity from DNA sequences is valuable but challenging, as it requires understanding complex biological regulatory processes. Existing methods typically regress activity scores from sequences in a black-box manner, limiting both interpretability and regression performance. Meanwhile, large language models (LLMs) benefit from explicit reasoning processes, yet directly applying LLMs to raw DNA sequences performs poorly. In this paper, we bridge this gap by introducing R3LM, a framework that teaches LLMs reasoning-informed regression on regulatory DNA through structured biological knowledge. Specifically, we design a biologically grounded data format that structures DNA's regulatory information for improved LLM understanding, and construct CRE-ReasonBench, the first dataset that associates DNA sequences and activity scores with mechanistic reasoning traces. Through two-stage training that first teaches LLMs reasoning over structured biological information then performs regression, R3LM achieves state-of-the-art performance on enhancer prediction across three cell types, outperforming both LLMs with raw sequence input and specialized DNA models while providing interpretable mechanistic explanations. We expect R3LM as an interpretable reward model that can effectively assist biologists in CRE design. Code is available at https://github.com/DuanYi516/R3LM.
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