CryoNet.Refine: A One-step Diffusion Model for Rapid Refinement of Structural Models with Cryo-EM Density Map Restraints
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Abstract (arXiv)
High-resolution structure determination by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) requires the accurate fitting of an atomic model into an experimental density map. Traditional refinement pipelines such as Phenix.real_space_refine and Rosetta are computationally expensive, demand extensive manual tuning, and present a significant bottleneck for researchers. We present CryoNet.Refine, an end-to-end deep learning framework that automates and accelerates molecular structure refinement. Our approach utilizes a one-step diffusion model that integrates a density-aware loss function with robust stereochemical restraints, enabling rapid optimization of a structure against experimental data. CryoNet.Refine provides a unified and versatile solution capable of refining protein complexes as well as DNA/RNA-protein complexes. In benchmarks against Phenix.real_space_refine, CryoNet.Refine consistently achieves substantial improvements in both model-map correlation and overall geometric quality metrics. By offering a scalable, automated, and powerful alternative, CryoNet.Refine aims to serve as an essential tool for next-generation cryo-EM structure refinement. Web server: https://cryonet.ai/refine; Source code: https://github.com/kuixu/cryonet.refine.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 7 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2026.
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7 of 40 references.
References · 7
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
- 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 2,994
- 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,778
- 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 721
- 2025One-Step Diffusion-based Real-World Image Super-Resolution with Visual Perception Distillationcited by 5
- 2019A^2-Net: Molecular Structure Estimation from Cryo-EM Density Volumescited by 4
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.
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- 2024CryoFM: A Flow-based Foundation Model for Cryo-EM Densities
- 2022Latent Space Diffusion Models of Cryo-EM Structures
- 2025CryoCCD: Conditional Cycle-consistent Diffusion with Biophysical Modeling for Cryo-EM Synthesis
- 2026CrystalBoltz: End-to-End Protein Structure Determination via Experiment-Guided Diffusion for X-Ray Crystallography
- 2026Robust Inference-Time Steering of Protein Diffusion Models via Embedding Optimization
- 2026Cryo-SWAN: the Multi-Scale Wavelet-decomposition-inspired Autoencoder Network for molecular density representation of molecular volumes
- 2026Accurate structural modeling of chemically diverse molecular interfaces with Vilya-2
- 2026Inference-Time Projection for Physically Valid Biomolecular Diffusion Models