AlphaGenome Variant Performance Looks 'Middle of the Pack' Once Distillation Is Stripped Out, Researcher Finds

jeffvierstra · x · 2026-09-19

Researcher jeffvierstra shared hands-on benchmarks of genome models in a discussion with Anshul Kundaje and Steven Salzberg: chromBPNet works best on cell-selectivity peaks, while AlphaGenome is middle of the pack on open-chromatin variant tasks once model distillation is removed. Signed Pearson correlations are nearly identical across models, suggesting distillation mostly adjusts noise; pre-distilled AlphaGenome checkpoints aren't public so it can't be fully verified.

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