Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been building and training language models on protein sequence data, replicating the success seen in other domains, with profound implications. In this post, I will explore how transformer models have been applied to protein data and what we’ve found. The language of proteinsMuch like words form sentences, protein sequences—strings of the 20 amino acids that make up the protein "vocabulary"—determine the st...