Scientists at the University of Glasgow have harnessed a powerful supercomputer, normally used by astronomers and physicists to study the universe, to develop a new machine learning model which can help translate the language of proteins.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, the cross-disciplinary team developed a large language model (LLM), called PLM-Interact, to better understand protein interactions, and even predict which mutations will impact how these crucial molecules “talk” to one another.

Early tests of PLM-interact, a protein language model (PLM), show that it outperforms competing models in understanding and predicting how proteins interact with one another. The team’s research demonstrates PLM-interact could help us better understand key areas of medical science, including the development of diseases such as cancer and virus infection.