AI-Empowered Genome Decoding: Applications of Large Language Models in Genomics
摘要
Large language models (LLMs) have transformed natural language processing with their improved performance compared with previous methods and have shown great potential to be adopted in other fields. The sequential nature of genomics data, such as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), ribonucleic acid (RNA), and proteins, makes it akin to human natural language, supporting the application of LLMs. Currently, LLMs have only been applied to genomic research for about four years but have already achieved significant advances in many challenging and important problems. This review summarizes the recent progress of applying LLMs in genomic research, including developing biological foundation models for protein, DNA, and RNA, as well as specialized models for interaction prediction, single-cell analysis, and structure prediction. The review discusses the challenges and potentials of adopting new advancements in LLMs for genomic applications and proposes several practical projects for integrating LLMs into genomics teaching and learning.