Simple baselines rival protein language models in mutation-dense design tasks (opens in new tab)

Computational protein design demands generally applicable models that reliably predict or generate unmeasured variants with superior functional properties. Recent studies have proposed protein language models (pLMs) for design tasks, including zero-shot scoring and transfer learning from limited experimental data. Although pLMs have been used in zero-shot and transfer-learning studies, they have generally not been assessed in benchmarks that explicitly test combinatorial extrapolation from lo...