Current progress and open challenges for applying deep learning across the biosciences.

Journal: Nature communications
Published Date:

Abstract

Deep Learning (DL) has recently enabled unprecedented advances in one of the grand challenges in computational biology: the half-century-old problem of protein structure prediction. In this paper we discuss recent advances, limitations, and future perspectives of DL on fiveĀ broad areas: protein structure prediction, protein function prediction, genome engineering, systems biology and data integration, and phylogenetic inference. We discuss each application area and cover the main bottlenecks of DL approaches, such as training data, problem scope, and the ability to leverage existing DL architectures in new contexts. To conclude, we provide a summary of the subject-specific and general challenges for DL across the biosciences.

Authors

  • Nicolae Sapoval
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Amirali Aghazadeh
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Berkeley, CA, USA.
  • Michael G Nute
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Dinler A Antunes
    Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Advait Balaji
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Richard Baraniuk
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • C J Barberan
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Ruth Dannenfelser
    Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
  • Chen Dun
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Mohammadamin Edrisi
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • R A Leo Elworth
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Bryce Kille
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Anastasios Kyrillidis
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Luay Nakhleh
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Cameron R Wolfe
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Zhi Yan
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
  • Vicky Yao
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA; Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
  • Todd J Treangen
    Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. treangen@rice.edu.