Prot2Token: A Unified Framework for Protein Modeling via Next-Token Prediction

The diverse nature of protein prediction tasks has traditionally necessitated specialized models, hindering the development of broadly applicable and computationally efficient Protein Language Models (PLMs). In this work, we introduce Prot2Token, a unified framework that overcomes these challenges by converting a wide spectrum of protein-related predictions, from sequence-level properties and residue-specific attributes to complex inter-protein interactions, into a standardized next-token prediction format. At its core, Prot2Token employs an autoregressive decoder, conditioned on embeddings from pre-trained protein encoders and guided by learnable task tokens, to perform diverse predictions. This architecture uniquely facilitates multi-task learning, enabling a single model to master numerous tasks with improved efficiency. We present extensive experimental validation across a variety of benchmarks, demonstrating Prot2Tokens strong predictive power in different types of protein-prediction tasks. Key results include significant speedups (e.g., near 1000x over AlphaFold2 with MSA) and performance often matching or exceeding specialized approaches. Beyond that, we introduce an auxiliary self-supervised decoder pre-training approach to improve spatially sensitive task performance. Prot2Token thus offers a significant step towards a versatile, high-throughput paradigm for protein modeling, promising to accelerate biological discovery and the development of novel therapeutics. The code is available at https://github.com/mahdip72/prot2token .

Customizing an Affective Tutoring System Based on Facial Expression and Head Pose Estimation

In recent years, the main problem in e-learning has shifted from analyzing content to personalization of learning environment by Intelligence Tutoring Systems (ITSs). Therefore, by designing personalized teaching models, learners are able to have a successful and satisfying experience in achieving their learning goals. Affective Tutoring Systems (ATSs) are some kinds of ITS that can recognize and respond to affective states of learner. In this study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a system to personalize the learning environment based on the facial emotions recognition, head pose estimation, and cognitive style of learners. First, a unit called Intelligent Analyzer (AI) created which was responsible for recognizing facial expression and head angles of learners. Next, the ATS was built which mainly made of two units: ITS, IA. Results indicated that with the ATS, participants needed less efforts to pass the tests. In other words, we observed when the IA unit was activated, learners could pass the final tests in fewer attempts than those for whom the IA unit was deactivated. Additionally, they showed an improvement in terms of the mean passing score and academic satisfaction.

How Self-Supervised Learning Can be Used for Fine-Grained Head Pose Estimation?

Recent progress of Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) demonstrates the capability of these methods in computer vision field. However, this progress could not show any promises for fine-grained tasks such as Head Pose estimation. In this article, we have tried to answer a question: How SSL can be used for Head Pose estimation? In general, there are two main approaches to use SSL: (1) Using pre-trained weights which can be done via SSL tasks, (2) Leveraging SSL as an auxiliary co-training task besides of Supervised Learning (SL) tasks at the same time. In this study, modified versions of jigsaw puzzling and rotation as SSL pre-text tasks are used and the best architecture for our proposed Hybrid Multi-Task Learning (HMTL) is found. Finally, the HopeNet method as a baseline SL is selected and the impact of SSL pre-training and ImageNet pre-training on both HMTL and SL are compared. The error rate reduced by the HMTL method up to 13% compare to the SL. Moreover, HMTL method showed that it was good with all kinds of initial weights: random, ImageNet and SSL pre-training weights. Also, it was observed, when puzzled images are used for SL alone, the average error rate placed between SL and HMTL, showed the importance of local spatial features compare to global spatial features.

A Brief Review of Machine Learning Techniques for Protein Phosphorylation Sites Prediction

Reversible Post-Translational Modifications (PTMs) have vital roles in extending the functional diversity of proteins and effect meaningfully the regulation of protein functions in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. PTMs have happened as crucial molecular regulatory mechanisms that are utilized to regulate diverse cellular processes. Nevertheless, among the most well-studied PTMs can say mainly types of proteins are containing phosphorylation and significant roles in many biological processes. Disorder in this modification can be caused by multiple diseases including neurological disorders and cancers. Therefore, it is necessary to predict the phosphorylation of target residues in an uncharacterized amino acid sequence. Most experimental techniques for predicting phosphorylation are time-consuming, costly, and error-prone. By the way, computational methods have replaced these techniques. These days, a vast amount of phosphorylation data is publicly accessible through many online databases. In this study, at first, all datasets of PTMs that include phosphorylation sites (p-sites) were comprehensively reviewed. Furthermore, we showed that there are basically two main approaches for phosphorylation prediction by machine learning: End-to-End and conventional. We gave an overview for both of them. Also, we introduced 15 important feature extraction techniques which mostly have been used for conventional machine learning methods

Using Self-Supervised Co-Training to Improve Facial Representation

In this paper, at first, the impact of ImageNet pre-training on Facial Expression Recognition (FER) was tested under different augmentation levels. It could be seen from the results that training from scratch could reach better performance compared to ImageNet fine-tuning at stronger augmentation levels. After that, a framework was proposed for standard Supervised Learning (SL), called Hybrid Learning (HL) which used Self-Supervised co-training with SL in Multi-Task Learning (MTL) manner. Leveraging Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) could gain additional information from input data like spatial information from faces which helped the main SL task. It is been investigated how this method could be used for FER problems with self-supervised pre-tasks such as Jigsaw puzzling and in-painting. The supervised head (SH) was helped by these two methods to lower the error rate under different augmentations and low data regime in the same training settings. The state-of-the-art was reached on AffectNet via two completely different HL methods, without utilizing additional datasets. Moreover, HL's effect was shown on two different facial-related problem, head poses estimation and gender recognition, which concluded to reduce in error rate by up to 9% and 1% respectively. Also, we saw that the HL methods prevented the model from reaching overfitting.