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Miniaturizing and Modifying Natural Proteins with Raygun

Nature, 2026 · paper · Biomedicine

Introduces Raygun, a generative AI framework that represents proteins as fixed-dimension probability distributions from language-model embeddings. It shrinks, expands and diversifies proteins while preserving predicted structure; shortened fluorescent proteins and TurboID were validated in cells, and expanded EGF variants bound EGFR more tightly.

Checked: PDF from nature.com, fetched 5 Oct 2026. Page numbers are those of that PDF.

20 findings

Substance The Extended Data Fig. 1 caption gives the latent dimensions as "five randomly selected positions in the 50 × 280 Raygun fixed-length embedding", whereas the embedding is 50 × 1,280 elsewhere (main text: "a fixed 64,000-dimensional space (50 × 1,280)").
  • p. 11 Extended Data Fig. 1 caption
    randomly selected positions in the 50 × 280 Raygun fixed-length embedding
  • p. 3 Results, 'Proteins as probability distributions'
    a fixed 64,000-dimensional space (50 × 1,280)
  • p. 11 Extended Data Fig. 1 caption
    five randomly selected positions in the 50 × 280 Raygun fixed-length embedding
  • p. 11 Extended Data Fig. 1 legend
    50 × 280 Raygun fixed-length embedding

Judge's note: Read the full page image main-p011.png and the caption crops. The caption as typeset reads "50 × 280". The panel column headers on the same page are (5, 0), (15, 300), (25, 600), (35, 900) and (45, 1200), so the second index runs to 1,200, which is impossible in a 280-column representation. Main p.3 (crop C018-b) prints "a fixed 64,000-dimensional space (50 × 1,280)", and the Extended Data Fig. 4 caption (crop C024-b) prints "a final latent representation of dimensions 50 × 1280". A dropped "1," in the Extended Data Fig. 1 caption; the printed value contradicts the figure's own axes.

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Substance "Raygun shortened eGFP by up to 25 amino acids (10.5%) and mCherry by 37 amino acids (15.6%), producing proteins with 199 and 206 amino acids, respectively" - the pair is wrong: 238 - 25 = 213 (eGFP, XFP02) and 236 - 37 = 199 (mCherry, XFP08); 199 and 206 are both mCherry candidates. The Discussion repeats "shortened eGFP and mCherry to as little as 199 and 206 amino acids".
  • p. 5 Results, 'Miniaturized fluorescent proteins', right column
    Raygun shortened eGFP by up to 25 amino acids (10.5%) and mCherry by 37 amino acids (15.6%), producing proteins with 199 and 206 amino acids, respectively
  • p. 8 Discussion, right column
    Raygun shortened eGFP and mCherry to as little as 199 and 206 amino acids
  • p. 6 Fig. 3, eGFP candidate XFP02 / mCherry candidate XFP08 labels
    Length: 213
  • p. 6 Fig. 3, top row structure labels (XFP08)
    Length: 199

Judge's note: Read the Results sentence (crop C007-a), the Discussion sentence (crop C007-b) and Fig. 3 (crop C007-c/d) on the page images. Fig. 3 lengths are XFP01 219, XFP02 213, XFP03 224, XFP04 233 (eGFP) and XFP05 206, XFP06 219, XFP07 234, XFP08 199 (mCherry); no eGFP candidate is below 213. The same paragraph gives the templates as eGFP 238 aa and mCherry 236 aa, so the stated reductions give 213 and 199. Supplementary Note 3 (crop C007-g) independently states 'One candidate (199 aa, derived from mCherry)'. I searched for an alternative population or construct that could give 199 for eGFP and found none.

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Substance The stated TurboID template size "TurboID (approximately 335 amino acids)" cannot be reconciled with the percentage reductions printed for the variants, "TurboID-1 (317 amino acids, 1% reduction) and TurboID-5 (304 amino acids, 6% reduction)".
  • p. 5 Results, 'Miniaturized TurboID proteins'
    TurboID (approximately 335 amino acids) is large enough to complicate fusion tagging
  • p. 6 Results, 'Miniaturized TurboID proteins', right column
    TurboID-1 (317 amino acids, 1% reduction)
  • p. 6 Results, right column
    TurboID-1 (317 amino acids, 1% reduction) and TurboID-5 (304 amino acids, 6% reduction)
  • p. 5 Miniaturized TurboID
    TurboID (approximately 335

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read both sentences on the page images (crops C008-d/e for 'approximately 335 amino acids' on p. 5, crop C008-c for the two variant percentages on p. 6). From 335 residues, 317 is a 5.4% reduction and 304 a 9.3% reduction (301, the length printed in Fig. 4a, gives 10.1%), not the stated 1% and 6%; the printed percentages correspond to a template of about 320-321 residues, which is also the lower end of the generation window '240 to 320' in Supplementary Methods A.6. I checked the article and supplement for a second, tagged construct length that could explain the gap and found none (the HA tag is mentioned only for expression). 'Approximately' cannot absorb 1% versus 5.4%, but only the authors can say which figure is right.

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Substance "We generated 500,000 TurboID variants targeting moderate miniaturization (195-235 amino acids)" contradicts Supplementary Methods A.6 ("the model was used to generate 500,000 TurboID candidates between the ranges of 240 to 320") and the candidate lengths in Fig. 4a (317, 314, 310, 305, 301, 297, 294, 289, 271, 258).
  • p. 5 Results, 'Miniaturized TurboID proteins', last paragraph
    We generated 500,000 TurboID variants targeting moderate miniaturization (195–235 amino acids)
  • p. 12 Supplementary Methods A.6, TurboID candidate selection process
    the model was used to generate 500,000 Tur- boID candidates between the ranges of 240 to 320
  • p. 7 Fig. 4a, candidate lengths
    258
  • p. 7 Fig. 4a, lengths of TurboID-1 to TurboID-10
    317

Judge's note: Read the main-text sentence on the page image (crops C009-a/e), Supplementary Methods A.6 on the supp-01 page image (crops C009-g/h) and the Fig. 4a length row on main p. 7 (crops C009-f, C013-f). All ten 'moderate objective' candidates lie between 258 and 317 aa, i.e. inside the supplement's 240-320 window and entirely outside the main text's 195-235 window; 195-235 is the range the preceding section gives for the eGFP/mCherry generation ('generating 70,000 candidates per template at lengths of 195-235 amino acids'), so it appears to have been carried over. The extreme objective (150-180 aa) is consistent with TurboID-11 at 165 aa. No alternative generation run with a 195-235 window is reported anywhere in the files.

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Substance The Extended Data Fig. 9 caption states "We evaluated 24 templates from the PFAM analysis spanning four SCOP classes (one protein excluded due to missing GO annotations). For 14 of 19 templates…", but 24 minus one exclusion is 23, and the PFAM analysis comprises 20 templates (4 domains × 5 proteins).
  • p. 20 Extended Data Fig. 9 caption, panel (a)
    We evaluated 24 templates from the PFAM analysis spanning four SCOP classes (one protein excluded due to missing GO annotations). For 14 of 19 templates
  • p. 19 Extended Data Fig. 8 caption
    For each PFAM domain, we obtained 5 representative proteins of diverse sizes
  • p. 20 Extended Data Fig. 9a
    We evaluated 24 templates
  • p. 5 Results
    14 out of 19 templates

Judge's note: Read main-p020.png in full: panel (a) contains exactly 19 scatter panels (rows of 5, 5, 5 and 4: P32246, P32250, P35376, P25100, P30989; A9A3D4, D7DUZ7, B2A1Z7, D1Z1H4, A9I4C3; Q24CC0, H8KX25, C0Z8L5, D7C2V6, Q7UG99; P52697, Q21KS1, Q03PD4, Q5FUT3). Read main-p019.png: Extended Data Fig. 8 lists exactly five UniProt IDs for each of the four SCOP classes (PF00001, PF10282, PF04794, PF01996) and states "For each PFAM domain, we obtained 5 representative proteins", fixing the pool at 20. A9NE84 (Fig. 8d) is the one template absent from Fig. 9a, consistent with 20 − 1 = 19, which is also the denominator in the caption and in the main text on p.5 ("for 14 out of 19 templates"). The figure's "24" is therefore inconsistent with its own arithmetic and with Fig. 8.

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Substance In Algorithm 1 (Forward operation of Raygun Reduction Layer) the end-block statistics are taken from the start block: "Me, Se = GetMeanStd(Es, mws + 1)", so the defined end block Ee = E[n − gr · (mws + 1) :, :] is never used.
  • p. 5 Algorithm 1, Forward operation of Raygun Reduction Layer
    Me, Se = GetMeanStd(Es, mws + 1)
  • p. 5 Algorithm 1, definition of the end block
    Ee = E[n −gr · (mws + 1) :, :];

Judge's note: Read the algorithm on the page image supp-01-p005.png. The three slices are defined as Es = E[0 : gl·(mws+1), :], Em = E[gl·(mws+1) : gl·(mws+1)+mid·mws, :] and Ee = E[n − gr·(mws+1) :, :]; the next three lines print Ms,Ss = GetMeanStd(Es, mws+1), Mm,Sm = GetMeanStd(Em, mws) and Me,Se = GetMeanStd(Es, mws+1). The third call takes Es, so Ee is defined and never consumed, and the concatenations M = Concatenate(Ms, Mm, Me) and S = Concatenate(Ss, Sm, Se) would summarise the N-terminal block twice and omit the C-terminal block. That contradicts the text on supp-01 p.4, which says the first 22 and last 21 blocks are each given size 11 within one partition of the sequence, and it is asymmetric with the mirror-image Algorithm 3, which correctly uses three distinct slices for Ts, Tm and Te. GetMeanStd is a pure statistic of its argument, so re-using Es cannot be deliberate sharing. The evident fix is GetMeanStd(Ee, mws + 1).

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Substance Algorithm 2 (GetMeanStd) is declared with input X ∈ R^{rk×1280} and output m, s ∈ R^{k×1280}, but its body loops "for i ∈ 1, . . . , r do" and averages slices X[ik : (i + 1)k, :], producing r rows from blocks of size k.
  • p. 5 Algorithm 2 GetMeanStd()
    Output: m, s ∈ Rk×1280
  • p. 5 Algorithm 2 GetMeanStd(), loop
    for i ∈ 1, . . . , r do
  • p. 5 Algorithm 2, loop body
    for i ∈ 1, . . . , r do m[i, :] = mean(X[ik : (i + 1)k, :])

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read Algorithm 2 on the page image supp-01-p005.png. As printed the loop index runs to r while the declared output has k rows, and the slice width is k while the declared block structure (rk rows in k output blocks) has width r. The complementary routine, Algorithm 4 Fill(), uses the consistent convention: input X ∈ R^{k×1280}, output Y ∈ R^{kr×1280}, "for i ∈ 1, . . . , k do Y[ir : (i+1)r, :] = broadcast(X[i, :], r)". Checking against the call site in Algorithm 1, GetMeanStd(Es, mws+1) passes r = mws+1 with Es ∈ R^{gl·(mws+1)×1280}, so the required output Ms has gl rows, whereas the printed loop would produce mws+1 rows; the two readings coincide only when r = k. The pseudo-code is internally inconsistent as printed, but whether the intended fix is to swap the loop bound and slice width or to redeclare r and k is for the authors to say. I did not treat the 1-based start (i = 1 … with index ik) as a separate defect, since Algorithm 4 shares that convention.

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Substance "TurboID-5 (304 amino acids, 6% reduction)" conflicts with Fig. 4a, which prints "TurboID-5 ... Length 301", and with the 301-residue TurboID-5 sequence in Supplementary Table 2.
  • p. 6 Results, 'Miniaturized TurboID proteins', right column
    TurboID-5 (304 amino acids, 6% reduction)
  • p. 7 Fig. 4a, TurboID-5 length row
    301
  • p. 13 Supplementary Table 2, TurboID-5 sequence
    MKDNTVPLLLILLANGFFSGELGETLGSRAAINKHLTLRDGVDVFFVGKGYSPEPIPLNAKQILGQLDGGSVAVLPVVDSTNYYLLDRIG
  • p. 7 Fig. 4a, TurboID-1 length row
    317

Judge's note: Read the Results sentence on the page image (crop C013-a/C008-c) and the Fig. 4a length row on main p. 7 (crops C013-f, C009-f), which gives 317, 314, 310, 305, 301, 297, 294, 289, 271, 258 and 165. The Supplementary Table 2 TurboID-5 entry (crops C013-c, C013-e; supp-01 p. 13) is three 90-character lines plus the 31-character line 'FGISGIDKGGALLEQGVIKPWMGEISLRAEK' = 301 residues, while TurboID-1 is 90+90+90+47 = 317, matching both the figure and the text. So the two documents use the same measure and the text value 304 is the outlier; nothing in the article or supplement describes a tagged 304-residue construct.

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Substance The xfp01 sequence in Supplementary Table 1 is 220 residues (two 80-residue lines plus "VQLDDHQQTPIGGGVLLPDNHYLSTQSALSKDPNEKRDHMVLLEFVTAAGITLGTDELYK", 60 residues), but Fig. 3 labels XFP01 "Length: 219".
  • p. 10 Supplementary Table 1, row xfp01
    VQLDDHQQTPIGGGVLLPDNHYLSTQSALSKDPNEKRDHMVLLEFVTAAGITLGTDELYK
  • p. 6 Fig. 3, XFP01 label
    Length: 219

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Viewed supp-01 p010 (full page and crop C037-a) and main Fig. 3 crop C037-b. Table 1 is set in a monospace font with wrapped 80-character lines; xfp01 line 1 (MVSKGEELFT...YDDKMQDFFK) and line 2 (SCPEGVQERT...VNMIRHNEDG) are each 80 residues counted in blocks of ten, and line 3 is 60, giving 220. Fig. 3 prints "Length: 219" for XFP01. I counted the other seven entries the same way and every one matches its figure label exactly (xfp02 80+80+53=213, xfp03 80+80+64=224, xfp04 80+80+73=233, xfp05 80+80+46=206, xfp06 80+80+59=219, xfp07 80+80+74=234, xfp08 80+80+39=199), so the one-residue gap is specific to XFP01. Nothing on either page explains a different length convention. Only the authors can say whether the figure label or the tabulated sequence is at fault.

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Substance The two EGF candidate sequences are swapped between Fig. 4d and Supplementary Table 4: Fig. 4d prints "NNLYKRCAQSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALDKYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWWWREES" under EGF-Raygun-1 (Kd = 0.274 uM) and "YSAVRRCERSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALDKYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWIAGLII" under EGF-Raygun-2 (Kd = 0.561 uM), whereas Supplementary Table 4 assigns YSAVRR... to EGF-Raygun-1 and NNLYKR... to EGF-Raygun-2.
  • p. 7 Fig. 4d, sequence printed under the EGF-Raygun-1 structure
    NNLYKRCAQSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALD KYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWWWREES
  • p. 14 Supplementary Table 4
    EGF-Raygun-1 YSAVRRCERSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALDKYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWIAGLII
  • p. 8 Results, 'EGFR binders via magnification', right column
    EGF-Raygun-1 (70.7% identity) and EGF-Raygun-2 (76.8% identity)
  • p. 7 Fig. 4d, sequence printed under the EGF-Raygun-2 structure
    YSAVRRCERSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALDKYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWIAGLII

Judge's note: Read Fig. 4d on the page image (crops C015-a and C015-d, showing the sequence printed under each labelled structure) and Supplementary Table 4 on the supp-01 page image (crop C015-b). The two published assignments contradict each other. The internal evidence favours the supplementary table: the Results (crop C015-c) state EGF-Raygun-1 has the lower identity to wild type (70.7%) and EGF-Raygun-2 the higher (76.8%), and against the wild-type EGF template given in Supplementary Table 3 (Q6QBS2, NSDSECPLSHDGYCLHDGVCMYIEALDKYACNCVVGYIGERCQYRDLKWWELR, 53 aa) the NNLYKR... candidate retains more wild-type residues outside the shared 41-residue core (it keeps the initial N and a W in the C-terminal extension) than the YSAVRR... candidate does, so NNLYKR... is the more similar of the two and must be the 76.8% candidate, i.e. EGF-Raygun-2. I also checked the separate complaint that 70.7% is not a multiple of 1/56: 41/58 = 70.7%, attainable with a gapped 58-position alignment, so that part is not a defect.

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Reference or label In the decoder paragraph of Supplementary Methods A.1 the wrong layer is named: "All the projected outputs coming from the Reduction layer, after passing through the T-Blocks, are then aggregated in the final projection layer."
  • p. 4 Supplementary Methods A.1, second paragraph (decoder)
    All the projected outputs coming from the Reduction layer, after passing through the T-Blocks, are then aggregated in the final projection layer.
  • p. 15 Extended Data Fig. 4 caption
    each containing two Decoder TransformerLayer (TD) blocks and a Repetition layer

Judge's note: Read supp-01 p.4 as a page image. The paragraph opens "Similarly in the Raygun decoder, the T-Blocks are also usually arranged in pairs before and after the Repetition operation" and ends "We use 21 T-Blocks in the Raygun decoder: 10 before the Repetition operation and 11 after"; the length-transforming layer in the decoder is therefore the Repetition layer, and the Reduction layer belongs to the encoder (previous paragraph: "In the Raygun encoder, a T-Block output is usually the input to another T-Block and the Reduction layer"). Extended Data Fig. 4's caption (crop C024-b) confirms: the decoder cascades each contain "two Decoder TransformerLayer (TD) blocks and a Repetition layer". The sentence names the encoder's layer inside the decoder description; the label is wrong, the architecture described around it is not.

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Reference or label "with retention from 37% (alpha + beta) to 63% (alpha/beta)" attaches the maximum to the wrong structural class: in Extended Data Fig. 3d the ~63% Raygun bar is PF10282, which Extended Data Fig. 8b labels "Beta-propeller PF10282 (SCOP: beta-only)", while the alpha/beta domain PF04794 is at ~57%.
  • p. 5 Results, 'Structure preservation across sizes' (continued), left column
    with retention from 37% (α + β) to 63% (α/β)
  • p. 13 Extended Data Fig. 3d bar chart
    PF10282
  • p. 19 Extended Data Fig. 8 panel titles
    b Beta-propeller PF10282 (SCOP: β-only)
  • p. 5 Functional preservation across Pfam
    retention from 37% (α + β) to 63% (α/β)

Judge's note: Read the Results sentence on the page image (crop C010-d), Extended Data Fig. 3d on main p. 13 and the Extended Data Fig. 8 panel titles on main p. 19. Fig. 8 assigns the classes explicitly: (a) Rhodopsin PF00001 alpha-only, (b) Beta-propeller PF10282 beta-only, (c) YdjC-like PF04794 alpha/beta, (d) F420 ligase PF01996 alpha + beta. In Fig. 3d the Raygun bars rise left to right PF01996 (~38%), PF00001 (~44%), PF04794 (~57%), PF10282 (~63%), whose mean matches the quoted 50.65% average. The lower bound, 37% for alpha + beta, is correctly attributed; the class label on the 63% value is not. Bar heights read from the page image are approximate, but the ordering of the two highest bars is unambiguous.

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Reference or label Reference 20 dates the DDIM paper to ICLR 2023: "Song, J., Meng, C. & Ermon, S. Denoising diffusion implicit models. In International Conference on Learning Representations https://openreview.net/pdf?id=St1giarCHLP (ICLR, 2023)."
  • p. 9 Reference 20
    Denoising diffusion implicit models. In International Conference on Learning Representations https://openreview.net/pdf?id=St1giarCHLP (ICLR, 2023)

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Rests on outside knowledge: the year in which Song, Meng & Ermon's "Denoising diffusion implicit models" appeared at ICLR, which is not stated anywhere in the files. I read reference 20 on the page image of main p.9 (crop C017-a) and it does print "(ICLR, 2023)" exactly as quoted; the OpenReview id St1giarCHLP is also printed. Only the authors or an external check of the proceedings can settle the correct year, so this is an author query rather than an outright correction.

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Reference or label Supplementary Methods A.3.3 cites a non-existent location in the article: "In PFAM-based experiments (Section 2.3 of the main paper), we used HMMER [55]".
  • p. 9 Supplementary Methods A.3.3
    In PFAM-based experiments (Section 2.3 of the main paper), we used HMMER

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read supp-01 p009 (crop C032-a and full page) and main p001. The published Nature article uses unnumbered headings (Article/abstract, running headings) and has no numbered sections, so "Section 2.3 of the main paper" cannot be resolved; the supplement's own sections are lettered (A.1, A.2, A.3.3), so the pointer is not to the supplement either. Only the authors can say which article subsection was intended.

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Reference or label Supplementary Methods A.3.5 mislabels the tyrosine-kinase pool: "We obtained a total of 170 human PIK proteins from UniProt, out of which 13 templates were selected for benchmarking", in a paragraph about "the EC family of receptor protein-tyrosine kinases (EC 2.7.10.1)".
  • p. 11 Supplementary Methods, CLEAN benchmarking paragraph
    We obtained a total of 170 human PIK proteins from UniProt, out of which 13 templates were selected for benchmarking.
  • p. 20 Extended Data Fig. 9 caption, panel (c)
    miniaturized variants of 13 human protein tyrosine kinase templates (EC 2.7.10.1)
  • p. 20 Extended Data Fig. 9 caption, panel (c)
    13 human protein tyrosine kinase templates (EC 2.7.10.1)
  • p. 11 A.3.5 CLEAN benchmarking
    170 human PIK proteins from UniProt

Judge's note: Viewed supp-01 p011 (full page, crops C038-a/d/e) and main p020 with the Extended Data Fig. 9 caption (crops C038-b/c/f). The same sentence states the family is receptor protein-tyrosine kinases (EC 2.7.10.1), and the figure caption calls the same 13 templates "13 human protein tyrosine kinase templates (EC 2.7.10.1)". A grep of the whole extract shows "PIK" occurs exactly once and is never defined; "PTK" appears only inside reference [65]'s title. The abbreviation in the supplement is inconsistent with the family named in the same sentence and in the article.

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Reference or label The Extended Data Fig. 3e caption says the comparison was made "across noise parameters from 0.1 to 2.0", but both plotted panels e(i) and e(ii) have x axes ("Noise level (σ)") with ticks 0.1, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 3.
  • p. 14 Extended Data Fig. 3 caption, panel (e)
    across noise parameters from 0.1 to 2.0
  • p. 13 Extended Data Fig. 3e(i) and 3e(ii) x axes
    Noise level (σ)
  • p. 14 Extended Data Fig. 3e legend
    The only notable difference occurs at very low noise (0.1)
  • p. 14 Extended Data Fig. 3e legend
    noise parameters from 0.1 to 2.0

Judge's note: Read the full figure page main-p013.png: panels e(i) 'Same length generation' and e(ii) 'Length reduction by 20%' each show six grouped bars at noise levels 0.1, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 3, with the axis labelled 'Noise level (σ)'. The caption on main-p014.png (crop C020-a) restricts the range to "from 0.1 to 2.0", so the stated range does not cover the plotted data. The second reviewer's additional complaint about "The only notable difference occurs at very low noise (0.1)" I do not confirm: at 0.1 the unfinetuned/fine-tuned bars differ by roughly 0.11 vs 0.015, by far the largest relative gap in the panel, so that sentence is a defensible reading of the data. Confirmed only on the axis-range mismatch.

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Reference or label The same spCas9 AlphaFold3 figure is given two different manuscript numbers in supp-03: the text on page 12 reads "The complex-level iPTM and PTM scores (Figure A.14 and Methods in manuscript; Figure R6 below)", while the caption on page 13 reads "Figure R6 (Figure A.16 in manuscript)".
  • p. 13
    Figure R6 (Figure A.16 in manuscript)

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Viewed supp-03 p012 and p013 full page images. Page 12 points the reader to Figure A.14 for Figure R6; page 13's caption for that very figure (PTM/iPTM bar charts plus three spCas9-DNA/gRNA complex renderings) says Figure A.16. Both cannot be right; only the authors can say which manuscript figure number is correct.

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Wording Supplementary Methods A.1.1 describes the reduction partition as "Dividing the variable length embeddings into non-contiguous blocks is tricky if the sequence length n is not an exact multiple of the fixed-length dimension K", although the blocks are contiguous.
  • p. 4 Supplementary Methods A.1.1, Reduction Layer
    Dividing the variable length embeddings into non-contiguous blocks is tricky
  • p. 3 Results, 'Proteins as probability distributions'
    we partition each protein’s embedding into K = 50 contiguous stretches of residues (blocks)
  • p. 4 Supplementary Methods A.1.1, Reduction Layer
    Dividing the variable length embeddings into non-contiguous blocks is tricky if the sequence length n is not an exact multiple of the fixed-length dimension K.

Judge's note: Read supp-01 p.4 as a page image (supp-01-p004.png) and crop C023-c: the sentence prints "non-contiguous". The worked example immediately following partitions a 543-residue sequence into the first 22 blocks of size 11, the middle 7 of size 10 and the last 21 of size 11, i.e. a contiguous, non-overlapping cover (22+7+21 = 50 blocks). Algorithm 1 on supp-01 p.5 likewise takes consecutive slices E[0 : gl(mws+1)], E[gl(mws+1) : gl(mws+1)+mid·mws] and E[n − gr(mws+1) :]. The main text on p.3 states "we partition each protein's embedding into K = 50 contiguous stretches of residues (blocks)". The supplement's wording is the opposite of what is described and implemented; "non-overlapping" appears to be meant. Wording defect only; the method is clear from the example and pseudo-code.

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Wording In Supplementary Methods A.2 the symbol p′ is used for two different sequences: bullet 3 says "suppose we generated a new protein p′ of length n′ using Raygun. Then, this loss is designed to ensure that the fixed-length embedding of p is close to that of p′", while the following paragraph defines "p′ the Reconstructed Raygun sequence" (same length n) and introduces "p′′ ... of length n′ < n", which is the sequence actually used in equation (4).
  • p. 7 Supplementary Methods A.2, loss list item 3
    suppose we generated a new protein p′ of length n′ using Raygun. Then, this loss is designed to ensure that the fixed-length embedding of p is close to that of p′
  • p. 7 Supplementary Methods A.2, paragraph defining the losses and equation (4)
    Let p′′ be another Raygun sequence obtained from p of length n′ < n

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read supp-01 p007 crop C031-a and the full page image. Bullet 3 assigns p′ length n′ and says L_rp compares the fixed-length embedding of p with that of p′. The paragraph immediately below redefines p′ as the reconstructed (length-n) Raygun sequence used in L_ce = CrossEntropy(p,p′) (eq. 2), and names the shorter length-n′ sequence p′′; eq. (4) reads L_rp = ||RGUN_p^(50) − RGUN_p′′^(50)||_2. The same symbol therefore denotes two objects and the bullet does not match eq. (4). No disambiguating statement appears elsewhere on the page.

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Wording On supp-03 page 11 the ProTrek analysis is said to use "24 protein templates spanning four top-level SCOP classes" but the result is reported as "14 of 19 templates achieved PS > 10", with no statement reconciling 24 with 19.
  • p. 11
    showed that 14 of 19 templates achieved PS > 10

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Viewed supp-03 p011 full page (crop C043-a) and main p020. Figure R4 on supp-03 p011 contains 19 template panels (5+5+5+4), matching the "19" in the text, and the identical figure appears as Extended Data Fig. 9a in the article with the same 19 panels (P32246, P32250, P35376, P25100, P30989, A9A3D4, D7DUZ7, B2A1Z7, D1Z1H4, A9I4C3, Q24CC0, H8KK25, C0Z8L5, D7C2V6, Q7UG99, P52697, Q21KS1, Q03PD4, Q5FUT3). I searched for an explanation: the Extended Data Fig. 9 caption adds "(one protein excluded due to missing GO annotations)", which would give 23, not 19, and supp-03 gives no exclusion at all; the article Methods and supp-01 contain no further ProTrek template accounting. The gap between the stated starting set and the reported denominator is therefore left unexplained in both documents.

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12 minor (typos and the like; most checked by the judge only)
Wording Unqualified claim that "unfiltered Raygun candidates retained functional sites ... at substantially higher rates than the greedy baseline", whereas in Extended Data Fig. 3a(ii) the KRAS group shows Raygun at sigma = 0.5 (about 0.39) below one greedy PLM baseline bar (about 0.50).
  • p. 3 Results, 'The Raygun architecture', right column
    unfiltered Raygun candidates retained functional sites (chromophore residues23 and P-loop motifs24) at substantially higher rates than the greedy baseline
  • p. 13 Extended Data Fig. 3a(ii), KRAS group
    Functional site retention

Judge's note: Read the Results sentence on the page image (crop C004-a) and Extended Data Fig. 3a(ii) on main p. 13. In the eGFP and mCherry groups both Raygun bars (sigma = 0.05 and 0.5) exceed the ESM-C and ESM-2 greedy bars; in the KRAS group the bars read approximately 0.71 (Raygun sigma = 0.05), 0.39 (Raygun sigma = 0.5) and about 0.50 for a greedy baseline bar, so the relation does not hold for that one cell. The figure caption (p. 14) hedges with 'more consistently', and Supplementary Methods A.3.2 likewise says 'conserved by a significantly larger proportion than the baseline'. The aggregate claim is defensible; the unqualified wording in the Results overstates it slightly. Bar heights were read off the plotted page image and are approximate.

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Wording "Across the tested range (0.01 to 6), noise values near 0 enable minor edits" - no evaluation at noise 0.01 is reported; the noise sweeps cited in the same sentence (Extended Data Figs. 5d,e and 6a) use 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 3.0, 4.0, 6.0.
  • p. 5 Results, left column
    Across the tested range (0.01 to 6), noise values near 0 enable minor edits
  • p. 16 Extended Data Fig. 5d, x axis
    Noise
  • p. 18 Extended Data Fig. 7b, x axis
    Noise level (σ)

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read the sentence on the page image (crop C011-a) and the noise axes on main p. 16 (Extended Data Fig. 5d, crop C011-b) and p. 17 (Extended Data Fig. 6b(ii)), whose tick labels both start at 0.1 and end at 6.0. A text search of the article and supplements finds '0.01' only in this sentence. Other settings used elsewhere are sigma = 0.05 (Extended Data Fig. 3a) and noise = 0 (Extended Data Fig. 3f, 'the noise can be set to zero'), so the lower bound of the sweep as plotted is 0.1 and the quoted 0.01 matches no reported setting; the authors should say whether 0.1 was intended.

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Wording "No domain annotation was provided to the model, and UltraID was not in its training data" is left unreconciled with Supplementary Methods A.6: "Our initial steps involved fine-tuning model to perfectly reconstruct the TurboID, UltraID and the original BirA sequences."
  • p. 6 Results, 'Miniaturized TurboID proteins', left column
    No domain annotation was provided to the model, and UltraID was not in its training data.
  • p. 12 Supplementary Methods A.6, TurboID candidate selection process
    Our initial steps involved fine-tuning model to perfectly reconstruct the TurboID, UltraID and the original BirA sequences.

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read the Results sentence on the page image (crop C014-a, main p. 6) and Supplementary Methods A.6 on the supp-01 page image (crops C014-b, C009-h), which describes the very model used to generate the 500,000 TurboID candidates. The article nowhere distinguishes the UniRef50 pre-training corpus from the fine-tuning set, so as printed the claim that UltraID 'was not in its training data' reads as contradicted by the supplement; under the narrower reading (pre-training only) both statements could stand. I searched the peer-review file (supp-03) and found no clarification of this point. Only the authors can resolve which sense of 'training data' is meant.

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Typo Abstract parenthesis lacks a noun after the numeral: "Raygun miniaturized fluorescent proteins (2 shorter than 96% of fluorescent proteins in FPbase)".
  • p. 1 Abstract
    Raygun miniaturized fluorescent proteins (2 shorter than 96% of fluorescent proteins in FPbase)
  • p. 2 Introduction, right column
    we generated candidates with shorter sequences than 96% of known fluorescent proteins
  • p. 1 Abstract, sentence on cell-based validation
    (2 shorter than 96% of fluorescent proteins in FPbase)
  • p. 1 Abstract
    proteins (2 shorter than 96% of fluorescent proteins in FPbase)

Only the authors can say what is right here.

Judge's note: Read the abstract on the page image (crops C001-a, C001-c, C001-e): the character is a full-size inline '2' followed by a space, not a superscript citation marker (compare the superscripted 'models1-3' style elsewhere), so this is not an extraction artefact. The parenthesis has no noun for the numeral ('2 shorter'); the corresponding body text (crop C001-b, p. 2) says only 'we generated candidates with shorter sequences than 96% of known fluorescent proteins' and the Discussion (p. 8) says 'shortened eGFP and mCherry to as little as 199 and 206 amino acids, shorter than 96% of fluorescent proteins in FPbase'. An elliptical reading ('2 [of them] shorter than ...') is possible, so this is a minor wording/missing-word defect rather than a factual error; only the authors can say which word was dropped.

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Typo Fig. 1 legend expands the abbreviation wrongly: "Del, deletion; ins, insertion; seq, sequencing; sub, substitution", although in Fig. 1d 'seq' denotes sequence ("ESM-2: Seq -> embedding", "Pre-trained: Embedding -> seq").
  • p. 2 Fig. 1 caption, abbreviation list
    seq, sequencing; sub, substitution
  • p. 2 Fig. 1d, encoder/decoder labels
    ESM-2: Seq → embedding
  • p. 2 Fig. 1d, decoder label
    Pre-trained: Embedding → seq
  • p. 2 Fig. 1 caption, panel d abbreviations
    Del, deletion; ins, insertion; seq, sequencing; sub, substitution.

Judge's note: Read the Fig. 1 legend on the page image (crop C003-d) and panel d itself (crop C003-b), where the encoder box reads 'ESM-2: Seq -> embedding' and the decoder box 'Pre-trained: Embedding -> seq'; the figure contains no sequencing step. A grep of the whole article text finds 'sequencing' only in this legend line. The expansion should be 'sequence'; cosmetic.

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Typo "mCherry by 37 amino acids (15.6%)" - 37 of the stated 236-residue mCherry template is 15.68%, which rounds to 15.7%.
  • p. 5 Miniaturized fluorescent proteins
    mCherry by 37 amino acids (15.6%)

Judge's note: Read the sentence on the page image (crop C012-a) and the template length 'mCherry (236 amino acids)' in the same section (crop C011-a). 37/236 = 0.1568; the companion figure in the same sentence is rounded, not truncated (25/238 = 10.50% printed as 10.5%), so the 15.6% looks like a truncation. Cosmetic; not a rounding tie.

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Typo The Extended Data Fig. 10 caption prints "We miniaturized spCas9 to 6575% of its original length (900–1000 residues)", the range separator between 65 and 75 having been lost.
  • p. 21 Extended Data Fig. 10 caption
    We miniaturized spCas9 to 6575% of its original length (900–1000 residues)
  • p. 5 Results, left column
    Raygun-generated spCas9 variants (miniaturized to 65–75% of original length)

Judge's note: Read the caption on the page image main-p021.png via crop C022-a: the digits run together as "6575%" with no dash, while the neighbouring range "900–1000" on the same line keeps its en dash, so it is not a font or extraction artefact. The main text on p.5 (crop C022-b) prints the intended range: "Raygun-generated spCas9 variants (miniaturized to 65–75% of original length)". Typographic only; the intended value is recoverable from the main text.

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Typo In Fig. 4c the quantification panel's x-axis labels are zero-padded — "TurboID-01", "TurboID-05", "TurboID-07", "TurboID-08" (beside unpadded "TurboID-10", "TurboID-11") — whereas the blot lane labels in Fig. 4b and 4c and the text use "TurboID-1", "TurboID-5", "TurboID-7", "TurboID-8".
  • p. 7 Fig. 4c, x-axis categories of the quantification panel
    TurboID-01
  • p. 7 Fig. 4b, blot lane labels
    TurboID-1

Judge's note: Opened the crops of Fig. 4a, 4b and 4c on main p.7. The structure panels in 4a read TurboID-1 … TurboID-6, the blot lanes in 4b and in the left part of 4c read TurboID-1, -5, -7, -8, -10, -11, but the bar chart on the right of 4c reads Ctrl, TurboID-01, TurboID-05, TurboID-07, TurboID-08, TurboID-10, TurboID-11, in the same order and with the same control. Purely a labelling inconsistency within one figure; no data affected.

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Typo The Extended Data Fig. 1 caption prints "ShapiroWilk test statistics are shown for all 15 distributions" without a hyphen, while two lines later the same caption prints "median Shapiro-Wilk statistic is 0.96".
  • p. 11 Extended Data Fig. 1 legend
    ShapiroWilk test statistics are shown

Judge's note: Read the caption on the page image main-p011.png and the crop C019-a.png. The unhyphenated "ShapiroWilk" is visible as typeset in the right-hand column, with the hyphenated "Shapiro-Wilk" in the following sentence; it is not a line-break artefact, since both words sit mid-line. Cosmetic only.

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Typo Duplicated word on supp-01 page 11: "the default invocation of Raygun for protein generation includes 1-step recycling, which can be also be disabled by the user."
  • p. 11 A.3.5 Advantages of Recycling
    which can be also be disabled by the user

Judge's note: Read crop C039-a and the full supp-01 p011 image. The page image plainly shows "which can be also be disabled by the user"; this is not a text-layer artefact. Should read "which can also be disabled".

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Typo Misspelling in Supplementary Methods A.6: "thereby selecting only half the candiates obtained after pLL filtering".
  • p. 12 Supplementary Methods A.6, TurboID candidate selection process
    thereby selecting only half the candiates obtained after pLL filtering
  • p. 12 A.6 TurboID candidate selection
    selecting only half the candiates obtained after pLL filtering

Judge's note: Read crop C040-a, which reproduces the last line of supp-01 p011/A.6; the page image clearly shows "candiates" rather than "candidates". Not an extraction artefact.

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Typo In the authors' response in supp-03 PDF page 16, the company name is misspelled: "AdaptyBio Inc have now released a preprint detailing the protocol and the experimental setup." (should be "AdaptyvBio", as spelled by the referee two lines above and as "Adaptyv Bio" in the main article).
  • p. 16
    AdaptyBio Inc have now released a preprint

Judge's note: Viewed crop adjudicate/crops/C046-a.png and the full page extract/png/supp-03-p016.png. The page image plainly shows the author reply line "AdaptyBio Inc have now released a preprint..." with no "v", while the referee comment immediately above it (blue text) twice reads "AdaptyvBio". The correct spelling is corroborated within the files themselves, not from outside knowledge: main reference 46 reads "Crowdsourced protein design: lessons From the Adaptyv EGFR binder..." and the main acknowledgement text reads "protein characterization platform by Adaptyv Bio" (extract/main.txt lines 1241, 1290); supp-01 writes "Adaptyvbio competition". So this is a one-letter typographic slip in the peer-review response file, cosmetic only.

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