Genomic Language Models: Opportunities and Challenges
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Abstract (arXiv)
Large language models (LLMs) are having transformative impacts across a wide range of scientific fields, particularly in the biomedical sciences. Just as the goal of Natural Language Processing is to understand sequences of words, a major objective in biology is to understand biological sequences. Genomic Language Models (gLMs), which are LLMs trained on DNA sequences, have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of genomes and how DNA elements at various scales interact to give rise to complex functions. To showcase this potential, we highlight key applications of gLMs, including functional constraint prediction, sequence design, and transfer learning. Despite notable recent progress, however, developing effective and efficient gLMs presents numerous challenges, especially for species with large, complex genomes. Here, we discuss major considerations for developing and evaluating gLMs.
Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 32 of its 135 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2024.
Builds on
32 of 135 references.
References · 32
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 13; 2026: 4.
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- 2025BioReason: Incentivizing Multimodal Biological Reasoning within a DNA-LLM Modelcited by 35
- 2024Next Token Prediction Towards Multimodal Intelligence: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 27
- 2026JEPA-DNA: Grounding Genomic Foundation Models through Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecturescited by 9
- 2025EAIRA: Establishing a Methodology for Evaluating AI Models as Scientific Research Assistantscited by 5
- 2025JanusDNA: A Powerful Bi-directional Hybrid DNA Foundation Modelcited by 4
- 2025Open-weight genome language model safeguards: Assessing robustness via adversarial fine-tuningcited by 4
- 2024Diverse capability and scaling of diffusion and auto-regressive models when learning abstract rulescited by 3
- 2025A Phylogenetic Approach to Genomic Language Modelingcited by 2
- 2025Gene42: Long-Range Genomic Foundation Model With Dense Attentioncited by 1
- 2025Foundation Models for AI-Enabled Biological Designcited by 1
- 2025Biology-informed neural networks learn nonlinear representations from omics data to improve genomic prediction and interpretabilitycited by 1
- 2025NABench: Large-Scale Benchmarks of Nucleotide Foundation Models for Fitness Predictioncited by 1
8 more
- 2025Genomic Next-Token Predictors are In-Context Learnerscited by 1
- 2024Can linguists better understand DNA?cited by 0
- 2025CodonMoE: DNA Language Models for mRNA Analysescited by 0
- 2025A Deep Learning Pipeline for Epilepsy Genomic Analysis Using GPT-2 XL and NVIDIA H100cited by 0
- 2025Artificial Intelligence Virtual Cells: From Measurements to Decisions across Modality, Scale, Dynamics, and Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026AntigenLM: Structure-Aware DNA Language Modeling for Influenzacited by 0
- 2026GenomeOcean Anywhere: Private WebGPU Inference for Genome MoEscited by 0
- 2026VANDAM: Viewing a nucleotide sequence with DNA molecular priorscited by 0
- 2026VANDAM: Viewing a nucleotide sequence with DNA molecular priors30 Sep 2026
- 2026GenomeOcean Anywhere: Private WebGPU Inference for Genome MoEs27 Sep 2026
- 2026JEPA-DNA: Grounding Genomic Foundation Models through Joint-Embedding Predictive Architectures19 Feb 2026
- 2026AntigenLM: Structure-Aware DNA Language Modeling for Influenza9 Feb 2026
- 2025Open-weight genome language model safeguards: Assessing robustness via adversarial fine-tuning24 Nov 2025
- 2025Genomic Next-Token Predictors are In-Context Learners16 Nov 2025
- 2025NABench: Large-Scale Benchmarks of Nucleotide Foundation Models for Fitness Prediction4 Nov 2025
- 2025Biology-informed neural networks learn nonlinear representations from omics data to improve genomic prediction and interpretability16 Oct 2025
- 2025Artificial Intelligence Virtual Cells: From Measurements to Decisions across Modality, Scale, Dynamics, and Evaluation14 Oct 2025
- 2025A Deep Learning Pipeline for Epilepsy Genomic Analysis Using GPT-2 XL and NVIDIA H1001 Oct 2025
- 2025CodonMoE: DNA Language Models for mRNA Analyses6 Aug 2025
- 2025BioReason: Incentivizing Multimodal Biological Reasoning within a DNA-LLM Model29 May 2025
8 more
- 2025JanusDNA: A Powerful Bi-directional Hybrid DNA Foundation Model22 May 2025
- 2025Foundation Models for AI-Enabled Biological Design16 May 2025
- 2025Gene42: Long-Range Genomic Foundation Model With Dense Attention20 Mar 2025
- 2025A Phylogenetic Approach to Genomic Language Modeling4 Mar 2025
- 2025EAIRA: Establishing a Methodology for Evaluating AI Models as Scientific Research Assistants27 Feb 2025
- 2024Next Token Prediction Towards Multimodal Intelligence: A Comprehensive Survey16 Dec 2024
- 2024Can linguists better understand DNA?10 Dec 2024
- 2024Diverse capability and scaling of diffusion and auto-regressive models when learning abstract rules12 Nov 2024
- 2024Next Token Prediction Towards Multimodal Intelligence: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 27
- 2026JEPA-DNA: Grounding Genomic Foundation Models through Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecturescited by 9
- 2025EAIRA: Establishing a Methodology for Evaluating AI Models as Scientific Research Assistantscited by 5
- 2025Open-weight genome language model safeguards: Assessing robustness via adversarial fine-tuningcited by 4
- 2025A Phylogenetic Approach to Genomic Language Modelingcited by 2
- 2025Gene42: Long-Range Genomic Foundation Model With Dense Attentioncited by 1
- 2025Foundation Models for AI-Enabled Biological Designcited by 1
- 2025Biology-informed neural networks learn nonlinear representations from omics data to improve genomic prediction and interpretabilitycited by 1
- 2025NABench: Large-Scale Benchmarks of Nucleotide Foundation Models for Fitness Predictioncited by 1
- 2025Genomic Next-Token Predictors are In-Context Learnerscited by 1
- 2024Can linguists better understand DNA?cited by 0
- 2025CodonMoE: DNA Language Models for mRNA Analysescited by 0
12 most cited of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026VANDAM: Viewing a nucleotide sequence with DNA molecular priors30 Sep 2026
- 2026JEPA-DNA: Grounding Genomic Foundation Models through Joint-Embedding Predictive Architectures19 Feb 2026
- 2026AntigenLM: Structure-Aware DNA Language Modeling for Influenza9 Feb 2026
- 2025Open-weight genome language model safeguards: Assessing robustness via adversarial fine-tuning24 Nov 2025
- 2025Genomic Next-Token Predictors are In-Context Learners16 Nov 2025
- 2025NABench: Large-Scale Benchmarks of Nucleotide Foundation Models for Fitness Prediction4 Nov 2025
- 2025Biology-informed neural networks learn nonlinear representations from omics data to improve genomic prediction and interpretability16 Oct 2025
- 2025Artificial Intelligence Virtual Cells: From Measurements to Decisions across Modality, Scale, Dynamics, and Evaluation14 Oct 2025
- 2025A Deep Learning Pipeline for Epilepsy Genomic Analysis Using GPT-2 XL and NVIDIA H1001 Oct 2025
- 2025CodonMoE: DNA Language Models for mRNA Analyses6 Aug 2025
- 2025Foundation Models for AI-Enabled Biological Design16 May 2025
- 2025Gene42: Long-Range Genomic Foundation Model With Dense Attention20 Mar 2025
12 newest of 16 All 16 (JSON)