Predicting protein structures using auxiliary folding networks

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for training a structure prediction neural network that comprises an embedding neural network and a main folding neural network. According to one aspect, a method comprises: obtaining a training network input characterizing a training protein; processing the training network input using the embedding neural network and the main folding neural network to generate a main structure prediction; for each auxiliary folding neural network in a set of one or more auxiliary folding neural networks, processing at least a corresponding intermediate output of the embedding neural network to generate an auxiliary structure prediction; determining a gradient of an objective function that includes a respective auxiliary structure loss term for each of the auxiliary folding neural networks; and updating the current values of the embedding network parameters and the main folding parameters based on the gradient.