Bio Embeddings

Resources to learn about bio_embeddings:

• Quickly predict protein structure and function from sequence via embeddings: embed.protein.properties.
• Read the current documentation: docs.bioembeddings.com.
• Chat with us: chat.bioembeddings.com.
• We presented the bio_embeddings pipeline as a talk at ISMB 2020 & LMRL 2020. You can find the talk on YouTube, and the poster on F1000.
• Check out the examples of pipeline configurations a and notebooks.

Project aims:

• Facilitate the use of language model based biological sequence representations for transfer-learning by providing a single, consistent interface and close-to-zero-friction
• Reproducible workflows
• Depth of representation (different models from different labs trained on different dataset for different purposes)
• Extensive examples, handle complexity for users (e.g. CUDA OOM abstraction) and well documented warnings and error messages.

The project includes:

• General purpose python embedders based on open models trained on biological sequence representations (SeqVec, ProtTrans, UniRep,...)
• A pipeline which:
  • embeds sequences into matrix-representations (per-amino-acid) or vector-representations (per-sequence) that can be used to train learning models or for analytical purposes
  • projects per-sequence embedidngs into lower dimensional representations using UMAP or t-SNE (for lightwieght data handling and visualizations)
  • visualizes low dimensional sets of per-sequence embeddings onto 2D and 3D interactive plots (with and without annotations)
  • extracts annotations from per-sequence and per-amino-acid embeddings using supervised (when available) and unsupervised approaches (e.g. by network analysis)
• A webserver that wraps the pipeline into a distributed API for scalable and consistent workfolws

Installation

You can install bio_embeddings via pip or use it via docker.

Pip

Install the pipeline like so:

pip install bio-embeddings[all]

To get the latest features, please install the pipeline like so:

pip install -U "bio-embeddings[all] @ git+https://github.com/sacdallago/bio_embeddings.git"

Docker

We provide a docker image at ghcr.io/bioembeddings/bio_embeddings. Simple usage example:

docker run --rm --gpus all \
    -v "$(pwd)/examples/docker":/mnt \
    -v bio_embeddings_weights_cache:/root/.cache/bio_embeddings \
    -u $(id -u ${USER}):$(id -g ${USER}) \
    ghcr.io/bioembeddings/bio_embeddings:v0.1.6 /mnt/config.yml

See the docker example in the examples folder for instructions. You can also use ghcr.io/bioembeddings/bio_embeddings:latest which is built from the latest commit.

Installation notes:

bio_embeddings was developed for unix machines with GPU capabilities and CUDA installed. If your setup diverges from this, you may encounter some inconsitencies (e.g. speed is significantly affected by the absence of a GPU and CUDA). For Windows users, we strongly recommend the use of Windows Subsystem for Linux.

What model is right for you?

Each models has its strengths and weaknesses (speed, specificity, memory footprint...). There isn't a "one-fits-all" and we encourage you to at least try two different models when attempting a new exploratory project.

The models prottrans_bert_bfd, prottrans_albert_bfd, seqvec and prottrans_xlnet_uniref100 were all trained with the goal of systematic predictions. From this pool, we believe the optimal model to be prottrans_bert_bfd, followed by seqvec, which has been established for longer and uses a different principle (LSTM vs Transformer).

Usage and examples

We highly recommend you to check out the examples folder for pipeline examples, and the notebooks folder for post-processing pipeline runs and general purpose use of the embedders.

After having installed the package, you can:

1. Use the pipeline like:

   bio_embeddings config.yml
   

   A blueprint of the configuration file, and an example setup can be found in the examples directory of this repository.

2. Use the general purpose embedder objects via python, e.g.:

   from bio_embeddings.embed import SeqVecEmbedder
   
   embedder = SeqVecEmbedder()
   
   embedding = embedder.embed("SEQVENCE")
   

   More examples can be found in the notebooks folder of this repository.

Cite

While we are working on a proper publication, if you are already using this tool, we would appreciate if you could cite the following poster:

Dallago C, Schütze K, Heinzinger M et al. bio_embeddings: python pipeline for fast visualization of protein features extracted by language models [version 1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2020, 9(ISCB Comm J):876 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1118163.1)

Contributors

• Christian Dallago (lead)
• Konstantin Schütze
• Tobias Olenyi
• Michael Heinzinger

Development status