Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason

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Abstract

Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended our repository of available protein structures, requiring fast and accurate MSTA methods. We introduce FoldMason, a progressive MSTA method that leverages the pairwise structural aligners Foldseek and TM-align for the multiple alignment of hundreds of thousands of protein structures, matching or exceeding the alignment quality of state-of-the-art MSTA methods while being two orders of magnitude faster. Using Flaviviridae glycoproteins, we demonstrate that FoldMason’s MSTAs support phylogenetic analysis beyond the “twilight zone.” FoldMason computes confidence scores, offers interactive visualizations, and provides essential speed and accuracy for large-scale protein structure analysis in the era of accurate structure prediction. FoldMason is free, open-source software.

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  1. Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧬💻🧪

  2. FoldMason aligns 100Ks of protein structures faster & accurately, using Foldseek & TM-align—pushing past limits in MSTA at scale! PMID:41610233, Science 2026, @ScienceMagazine https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads6733 #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪

  3. Multiple #protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

  4. From MSA to MSA Protein structures can reveal lost evolutionary links. FoldMason enables fast, large-scale structural alignt. using parallelized progressive tools to unlocks phylogenetics for prots with conserved structure but low seq. similarity 🤔🦠 let’s talk viruses now doi.org/10.1126/scie...

  5. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

  6. FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 💾 github.com/steineggerla...

  7. Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

  8. Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason | Science https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.ads6733?af=R

  9. Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

  10. Some very nice multiple protein alignment software based on predicted structure brought to you by the folks behind #MMseqs and #FoldSeek ... Gotta try out FoldMason!! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

  11. Finally got around to reading the FoldMason paper for structural phylogenetics. Fantastic work www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

  12. @grunewald.bsky.social told me about this amazing tool yesterday: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Seems worth checking out!

  13. FoldMason progressively aligns thousands of protein structures in seconds, enabling remote MSA for distant phylogeny. Highlights: structural flexible MSA, LDDT conservation score, friendly webserver 💾 github.com/steineggerla... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

  14. For future work, we plan to integrate the ProstT5 proteinlanguage model (37) to directly predict 3Di from aminoacid sequences, eliminating the need for slow structurepredictions. This integration will accelerate input generationfor FoldMason by over 3000× compared to optimizedColabFold prediction. Instead of structure input, an AAFASTA file can be provided for sequence-based MSTA.This approach would be particularly beneficial for studiesinvolving long proteins, as is the case in Mifsud et al

    This is a really exciting prospect! I wasn't 100% convinced given the marginal improvements to LDDT-vs-time presented, but with this speed increase I would be all-in on FoldMason. Looking forward to reading this, and thanks for your work so far!

  15. Multiple Protein Structure Alignment at Scale with FoldMason https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.01.606130v1

  16. Multiple Protein Structure Alignment at Scale with FoldMason https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.01.606130v1