Stanford's Kundaje questions DNA LMs: simpler methods suffice for promoter design
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-30
Stanford professor Anshul Kundaje pushed back on Evo-style DNA language model work by Brian Hie's team, arguing the advantage of a DNALM in genome design is unclear — since strong designs still require other sequence-to-activity (S2O) models to direct generation. He notes that for promoter and enhancer design (reporter constructs), much simpler existing approaches already work well, linking to those tools. A notable peer critique of the "DNA foundation model" paradigm.
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