Don't discard singleton proteins: study challenges standard protein LM training data filtering
KevinKaichuang · x · 2026-08-18
Kevin Kaichuang quotes and extends a study with collaborators: when training protein language models, the convention is to discard metagenomic proteins that don't cluster with at least one other protein (singletons), often assumed to be fragments or errors.
The work shows these rare non-clustering proteins are actually useful, suggesting the standard filtering strategy is probably wrong — nature is full of super-rare singleton proteins that carry signal.
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