A Minimum Variance Clustering Approach Produces Robust and Interpretable Coarse-Grained Models

Markov state models (MSMs) are a powerful framework for the analysis of molecular dynamics data sets, such as protein folding simulations, because of their straightforward construction and statistical rigor. The coarse-graining of MSMs into an interpretable number of macrostates is a crucial step for connecting theoretical results with experimental observables…

Read more

Markov State Models: From an Art to a Science

Markov state models (MSMs) are a powerful framework for analyzing dynamical systems, such as molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, that have gained widespread use over the past several decades. This perspective offers an overview of the MSM field to date, presented for a general audience as a timeline of key developments in the field. We sequentially address ea…

Read more

Solving the RNA design problem with reinforcement learning

We use reinforcement learning to train an agent for computational RNA design: given a target secondary structure, design a sequence that folds to that structure in silico. Our agent uses a novel graph convolutional architecture allowing a single model to be applied to arbitrary target structures of any length. After training it on randomly generated targets, w…

Read more

Variational encoding of complex dynamics

Often the analysis of time-dependent chemical and biophysical systems produces high-dimensional time-series data for which it can be difficult to interpret which individual features are most salient. While recent work from our group and others has demonstrated the utility of time-lagged covariate models to study such systems, linearity assumptions can limit th…

Read more

Update to points for incomplete WUs

Due to increasing problems with a small group of users intentionally  causing assigned work units to fail we’ve eliminated points for  incomplete work units.  We’ve also imposed stricter requirements for  bonus points.  Neither…

Read more

COVID Moonshot Sprint 10

Sprint 10 aims to help optimize the P1 pocket substituent to work around metabolism issues with our current best lead compounds. We’ve been quiet lately, but that’s because we’ve been…

Read more