Back to #small language model
#small language model Open access

Multi-Peptide Prompting Enables In-Context Learning in Protein Language Models

Aug 2026 · bioRxiv · 0 citations · 30 references
Biology

TL;DR

It is shown that single-sequence PLMs can perform in-context peptide learning without gradient updates, task-specific retraining, or architectural modification, and MPEP conditioning is established as a lightweight strategy for low-data peptide classification.

Abstract

Protein language models (PLMs) are trained primarily on individual protein sequences, yet many peptide-discovery problems require inference from only a small number of labeled examples. Here, we show that single-sequence PLMs can perform in-context peptide learning without gradient updates, task-specific retraining, or architectural modification. We introduce multi-peptide example prompts (MPEPs), in which demonstration peptides are concatenated with glycine spacers and used as context for scoring query peptides by their prompted probability. We evaluate this approach across a synthetic pattern-completion task, secondary-structure classification, and MHC-II binder prediction using both encoder-only ESM-2 models and decoder-only ProGen2 models. Across tasks, performance improves with the number of peptide examples and with model scale, indicating that PLMs can extract shared sequence-level properties from prompted examples. We further introduce a difference score that contrasts positive-example and negative-example MPEPs, reducing compositional biases in raw PLM probabilities and substantially improving classification. On MHC-II binder prediction, MPEP-based classification with larger ESM-2 models matches or exceeds low-data classifiers trained on frozen ESM-2 embeddings, while requiring no training. These results reveal an unexpected in-context inference capability in single-sequence PLMs and establish MPEP conditioning as a lightweight strategy for low-data peptide classification.

Read PDF

Similar papers

#small language model Open access Aug 2026

LifeSciBench: Evaluating Language Models on Realistic, Expert-Level Tasks in the Life Sciences

LifeSciBench is introduced, a benchmark of 750 expert-authored tasks designed to evaluate whether language models can handle realistic life science research work, with each constituent task paired with a human expert-written rubric.

Amelia Liu, Andrew Ho, Anne Marie Droste et al. · 2 citations
#small language model Preprint Aug 2026

Apodex 1.1: Scaling Agentic Intelligence for Complex Work

General-purpose language models can reason and synthesize knowledge, but complex work also requires sustained interaction with files, information sources, and executable code, together with state maintenance, failure recovery, and verifiable delivery. We call this \emph{working capability}: sustained, verifiable progress toward a real-world objective. Apodex 1.1 develops this capability along two complementary dimensions. \emph{Environment Scaling} expands the diversity and verifiability of executable file, search, and code environments, while \emph{Agentic Coordination Scaling} trains agents to decompose long-horizon tasks, delegate parallel work, integrate asynchronous results, and replan. A shared execution harness and AgentOS maintain task state and provenance across tools and agents, and training turns environment trajectories and coordination traces into reliable behavior. Across complex professional work, finance, scientific research, mathematics, coding, and search, Apodex 1.1 reaches the leading performance band despite using a substantially smaller model than many frontier systems. The 35B-parameter Apodex 1.1 Mini further retains strong working capability in a locally deployable form. These results ground agentic intelligence in useful, verifiable work completed over time and advance our goal of building a \emph{Heavy-Duty Solver} for ambitious, long-running tasks.

Apodex Team B. An, B. Li, B. Wang et al. · 1 citation

Low Carbon Scheduling of Integrated Energy System Based on Large Language Model-Embedded Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

The complex multi-energy coupling characteristics inherent to integrated energy system (IES) present unprecedented challenges for the implementation of low-carbon scheduling. Existing optimization methods often exhibit limitations in system scalability, algorithm adaptivity, and carbon reduction efficacy for complex IES. This paper proposes a Large Language Model (LLM)-Embedded Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (LEMARL) to address the aforementioned issues. The proposed method integrates the global perception capability of LLMs with the dynamic optimization capability of MARL. Specifically, the LLM-Embedded module generates high-quality reward functions and policy frameworks from a global perspective, while the MARL module leverages these LLM-generated strategies for distributed interactive iterations—greatly enhancing computation efficiency and scalability. Simulation results demonstrate that LEMARL reduces carbon emissions by 7.76% and simultaneously decreases operating costs by 4.49% in a small-scale IES. Furthermore, LEMARL also exhibits superior applicability and scalability in large-scale IES of the IEEE 141-bus power grid integrated with 51-node thermal system.

Chen Xia, Tong Gou, Yinliang Xu et al. · 1 citation
#small language model Preprint Aug 2026

CritICL: Inference-Time Weak-to-Strong Generalization from Small Language Model Failure Modes

Experimental results show that CritICL consistently outperforms standard in-context learning and achieves performance competitive with or superior to test-time scaling methods, while requiring significantly fewer generations and lower token cost.

Yu-Fan Wu, Yinghui He, Zhengyi Hu et al. · 1 citation
#artificial intelligence Preprint Aug 2026

TestifAI: Tomography-Based Testing for Deep Learning Systems

TestifAI, a deep learning testing framework for efficient and accurate estimation of robustness against combinations of perturbations, is proposed and partial model tomography is introduced, a novel approach to reconstructing model behaviour in a multi-perturbation space from tests that apply only a small number of perturbations.

Arooj Arif, T. Hartung, E. Botoeva et al. · 1 citation

Related blog posts