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Model Overview

RNAZoo includes 23 RNA deep learning models across 6 tracks. Each model runs in its own Docker container with baked-in weights.

All models at a glance

Model Track Task Input Output Device License
RiboNN Translation TE prediction (82 cell types) Tab-separated (UTR+CDS) TSV with TE per cell type CPU/GPU Apache 2.0
Riboformer Translation Codon-level ribosome density WIG + FASTA + GFF3 Density predictions CPU/GPU Upstream
RiboTIE Translation ORF detection from ribo-seq FASTA + GTF + BAM GTF + CSV CPU/GPU Upstream
TranslationAI Translation TIS/TTS/ORF prediction FASTA (mRNA) TIS/TTS/ORF text files CPU/GPU AGPL-3.0 + CC BY-NC 4.0
Saluki Translation mRNA half-life FASTA (case=UTR/CDS) NumPy array CPU/GPU Apache 2.0
CodonTransformer Translation Codon optimization FASTA (protein) FASTA (DNA) CPU/GPU Apache 2.0
RNA-FM Foundation RNA embeddings (640-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 640) CPU/GPU MIT
RiNALMo Foundation RNA embeddings (1280-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 1280) CPU/GPU Apache 2.0
ERNIE-RNA Foundation Structure-aware embeddings (768-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 768) CPU/GPU MIT
Orthrus Foundation Mamba mRNA embeddings (3 variants: 256–512-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x D) GPU only MIT
HydraRNA Foundation Hybrid Hydra-SSM + MHA full-length RNA embeddings (1024-d) FASTA (RNA, ≤10K nt) NumPy (N x 1024) GPU only MIT
RNAErnie Foundation Motif-aware RNA embeddings (768-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 768) CPU/GPU Apache-2.0 (HF port)
PlantRNA-FM Foundation Plant-only RNA embeddings (480-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 480) CPU/GPU MIT
CaLM Foundation Codon-level RNA embeddings (768-d) FASTA (CDS, codon-aligned) NumPy (N x 768) CPU/GPU BSD-3-Clause
mRNABERT Foundation Hybrid UTR/CDS mRNA embeddings (768-d) FASTA (mRNA, auto-ORF) NumPy (N x 768) CPU/GPU Apache-2.0
RhoFold Structure 3D structure prediction FASTA (RNA) PDB + CT CPU/GPU Apache 2.0
SPOT-RNA Structure 2D structure + pseudoknots FASTA (RNA) bpseq + CT + prob + dot-bracket CPU/GPU MPL-2.0
DRfold2 Structure (Tier 2) Single-seq ab initio 3D FASTA (RNA) PDB GPU only MIT
Pangolin Splicing Tissue-specific variant-effect splice scores VCF/CSV + reference FASTA + gffutils DB Annotated VCF/CSV CPU/GPU GPL-3.0
SpliceAI Splicing Variant-effect splicing predictions VCF + reference FASTA + annotation Annotated VCF (4-class delta) CPU/GPU PolyForm Strict + CC BY-NC 4.0
SpliceBERT Splicing Vertebrate primary-RNA embeddings (512-d) FASTA (RNA) NumPy (N x 512) CPU/GPU BSD-3-Clause
MultiRM Modification 12 RNA modification types FASTA (RNA, min 51 nt) TSV (probabilities + p-values) CPU/GPU MIT
UTR-LM mRNA Design MRL / TE / expression level FASTA (5'UTR DNA) TSV (predictions) CPU/GPU GPL-3.0

By track

Translation (6 models)

Models for predicting translation efficiency, ribosome profiling, ORF detection, mRNA stability, and codon optimization.

  • RiboNN — Multi-task TE prediction across 82 human cell types from mRNA sequence
  • Riboformer — Refine codon-level ribosome densities from ribo-seq data
  • RiboTIE — Detect translated ORFs from ribo-seq + genomic sequence
  • TranslationAI — Identify translation initiation/termination sites and ORFs
  • Saluki — Predict mRNA half-life from sequence (50-model ensemble)
  • CodonTransformer — Optimize codon usage for 164 organisms

RNA Foundation Models (9 models)

General-purpose RNA language models that produce embeddings for downstream tasks.

  • RNA-FM — 99M params, 640-d embeddings, max 1022 nt (MIT)
  • RiNALMo — 650M params, 1280-d embeddings, no hard length limit (Apache 2.0)
  • ERNIE-RNA — 86M params, 768-d embeddings, structure-aware attention (MIT)
  • Orthrus — Mamba SSM (~10M params), 256–512-d embeddings (3 4-track variants), unbounded input (linear memory), GPU only (MIT)
  • HydraRNA — Hybrid Hydra-SSM + MHA (~84M params), 1024-d embeddings, ≤10K nt, GPU only (MIT)
  • RNAErnie — 12-layer transformer, 768-d embeddings, motif-aware MLM, max 2046 nt (Apache-2.0 HF port)
  • PlantRNA-FM — 35M-param ESM transformer, 480-d embeddings, plant-only training (1124 species), max 1024 nt (MIT)
  • CaLM — 12-layer codon-level transformer (~86M params), 768-d embeddings, max 1024 codons (~3 kb) (BSD-3-Clause)
  • mRNABERT — 12-layer MosaicBERT (~86M params) with hybrid UTR/CDS tokenization + ALiBi extrapolation, 768-d embeddings, max 1024 tokens (Apache-2.0)

RNA Structure (3 models)

Secondary and 3D structure prediction from sequence.

  • RhoFold — Full-atom 3D structure prediction (PDB output), single-sequence mode
  • SPOT-RNA — 2D structure with pseudoknots, 5-model TF ensemble
  • DRfold2 — Single-seq ab initio 3D (Tier 2), composite LM + 4-model ensemble + Arena refinement; novel-fold wins vs RhoFold/RoseTTAFoldNA, GPU only

Splicing (3 models)

  • Pangolin — Variant-effect splicing predictor trained on 4 tissues (heart/liver/brain/testis) across human + mouse + rhesus + rat; complements SpliceAI with tissue-aware scores (GPL-3.0)
  • SpliceAI — 32-layer dilated CNN, ±5 kb context per variant; 4-class delta scores (acceptor/donor gain/loss) on annotated genes (PolyForm Strict + CC BY-NC 4.0; non-commercial only)
  • SpliceBERT — 6-layer/512-d BERT pretrained on 2M+ vertebrate primary RNAs (72 species), 1024 nt context (BSD-3-Clause)

RNA Modification (1 model)

  • MultiRM — Predicts 12 RNA modification types per position (m6A, m5C, pseudouridine, Am, Cm, Gm, Um, m1A, m5U, m6Am, m7G, A-to-I editing)

mRNA Design (1 model)

  • UTR-LM — Predicts mean ribosome loading, translation efficiency, or expression level from 5'UTR sequences

Fine-tuning support

Some models can be fine-tuned on your own data. The 9 foundation models share a generic head trainer (linear / MLP / XGBoost, regression or classification) — see the Fine Tuning guide for the full how-to. Three other models have custom training pipelines on their own pages.

Model Fine-tuning Details
10 foundation models Generic head trainer Frozen backbone + linear / MLP / XGBoost head on user (sequence, label) data. Regression or classification (auto-detected). Optional precomputed-embeddings shortcut. See the Fine Tuning guide.
RiboNN Transfer learning Freeze pretrained conv layers, train head on user TE data; use saved checkpoint via --ribonn_checkpoint
UTR-LM Full backbone Train ESM2 backbone + head on user MRL/TE/EL data; use saved checkpoint for prediction
RiboTIE Built-in Automatically fine-tunes on user ribo-seq BAMs before ORF prediction

Licenses

Model License GitHub Paper
RiboNN Apache 2.0 Sanofi-Public/RiboNN Nature Biotechnology 2025
Riboformer MIT lingxusb/Riboformer Nature Communications 2024
RiboTIE MIT TRISTAN-ORF/TRISTAN Nature Communications 2025
TranslationAI AGPL-3.0 + CC BY-NC 4.0 rnasys/TranslationAI NAR 2025
Saluki Apache 2.0 calico/basenji Genome Biology 2022
CodonTransformer Apache 2.0 Adibvafa/CodonTransformer Nature Communications 2025
RNA-FM MIT ml4bio/RNA-FM arXiv 2022
RiNALMo Apache 2.0 (code) + CC BY 4.0 (weights) lbcb-sci/RiNALMo Nature Communications 2025
ERNIE-RNA MIT Bruce-ywj/ERNIE-RNA Nature Communications 2025
Orthrus MIT bowang-lab/Orthrus Nature Methods 2026
HydraRNA MIT GuipengLi/HydraRNA Genome Biology 2025
RNAErnie MIT (code) + Apache-2.0 (LLM-EDA HF port weights) CatIIIIIIII/RNAErnie Nature Machine Intelligence 2024
PlantRNA-FM MIT yangheng/PlantRNA-FM Nature Machine Intelligence 2024
CaLM BSD-3-Clause oxpig/CaLM Nature Machine Intelligence 2024
mRNABERT Apache-2.0 yyly6/mRNABERT Nature Communications 2025
RhoFold Apache 2.0 ml4bio/RhoFold Nature Methods 2024
SPOT-RNA MPL-2.0 jaswindersingh2/SPOT-RNA Nature Communications 2019
DRfold2 MIT (README-declared; no LICENSE file) leeyang/DRfold2 PLOS Biology 2026
MultiRM MIT Tsedao/MultiRM Nature Communications 2021
Pangolin GPL-3.0 tkzeng/Pangolin Genome Biology 2022
SpliceAI PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 (code) + CC-BY-NC-4.0 (weights) — non-commercial Illumina/SpliceAI Cell 2019
SpliceBERT BSD-3-Clause (code) + CC-BY-4.0 (Zenodo weights) biomed-AI/SpliceBERT Briefings in Bioinformatics 2024
UTR-LM GPL-3.0 a96123155/UTR-LM Nature Machine Intelligence 2024