Abstract:How do protein structure prediction models fold proteins? We investigate this question through causal interventions on the folding trunks of ESMFold, OpenFold, and Boltz-1. Across all three models, we find a shared two-stage computational structure. In the first stage, early blocks initialize pairwise biochemical signals: features like charge propagate from sequence into pairwise representations through architecture-specific pathways. In the second stage, late blocks develop pairwise spatial features: distance and contact information accumulate in the pairwise representation. We verify these mechanisms causally by showing that steering charge and distance features induces predictable structural changes. Furthermore, these representations are functionally interchangeable: pairwise states can be linearly aligned and substituted across models. Together, these results suggest that folding trunks with different architectures, inputs, and training procedures converge on a shared representational organization for mapping sequence chemistry into spatial geometry.
From: Kevin Lu [view email]
[v1]
Thu, 5 Feb 2026 18:54:54 UTC (11,243 KB)
[v2]
Sun, 8 Feb 2026 20:38:53 UTC (11,244 KB)
[v3]
Wed, 24 Jun 2026 02:07:41 UTC (11,890 KB)
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