Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165 • Hacker News Board

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#31

Post by com2kid » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 12:41 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #12

rubicon33 wrote: post #10

Can someone explain what one might use this model for? As a developer with a casual interest in biology it would be fun to play with but honestly not sure what I would do

You can get your feet wet with genetic engineering for surprisingly little money. This guy shows a lot of how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium Basically you can design/edit/inject custom genes into things and see real results spending on the scale of $100-$1000.

We actually did this in my highschool genetics class back in 1999! We made bacteria change color by splicing in a gene. Awesome stuff.

The (public!) school had a grant from one of Seattle's biotech boom companies.

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#32

Post by dhruv3006 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 3:39 AM UTC

Interesting work - Looks like AI for science is having it's day right now.

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#33

Post by nradclif » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 3:57 AM UTC

"Complete results, architectural decisions, and runnable code below."

This is a weird post, there doesn't seem to be any "below" here. Another comment linked the article: https://huggingface.co/blog/OpenMed/training-mrna-models-25-...

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#34

Post by xyz100 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #17

xyz100 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this dataset or problem worth solving compared to other health datasets? Would the results on this task be broadly useful to health?

What other "datasets" are you talking about? How do you "solve a dataset" ?

You solve a dataset when you learn what there is to learn about the phenomenon of interest. The limit of such phenomenon is “cure all disease”, and clearly this is not solving that.

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#35

Post by jazzpush2 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

A Codon-based model is cool. I know NVIDIA is building quite a large one.

At GTC they showed an SAE they built on a smaller version of it, allowing you to see what their model learned: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/blog/sae/

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#36

Post by CyberDildonics » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

xyz100 wrote: post #34

CyberDildonics wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other "datasets" are you talking about? How do you "solve a dataset" ?

You solve a dataset when you learn what there is to learn about the phenomenon of interest. The limit of such phenomenon is “cure all disease”, and clearly this is not solving that.

What are you talking about? "the phenomenon of interest"? There is nothing you wrote in either comment that makes sense.

What is a "dataset" that has been "solved" and what did the program do that 'solved' it?

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#37

Post by justinclift » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

nradclif wrote: post #33

"Complete results, architectural decisions, and runnable code below." This is a weird post, there doesn't seem to be any "below" here. Another comment linked the article: https://huggingface.co/blog/OpenMed/training-mrna-models-25-...

Yeah. Things like "Complete results, architectural decisions, and runnable code below." is literally how AI outputs stuff, so I'd expect the post was AI written too. :(

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#38

Post by justinclift » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

colingauvin wrote: post #27

HN's blindspots never cease to amaze me. I am a structural biologist working in pharmaceutical design and this type of thing could be wildly useful (if it works).

Blind spot?

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#39

Post by _zoltan_ » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #29

_zoltan_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main concern is using fungi. If it ends up in my lungs I'm most likely screwed, right?

This is the classic meme https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/mmv2ig/lab_strains... Lab strains of things tend to be extremely sensitive and not human adapted. You shouldn't study and modify human-infecting organisms in your basement anyway. While you shouldn't ignore protective equipment and proper procedure... paranoia about infecting yourself with a lab leak isn't warranted.

I'd love to experiment with this stuff, just literally have no idea how it would be safe to start.

Re: Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165

#40

Post by xyz100 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #36

xyz100 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You solve a dataset when you learn what there is to learn about the phenomenon of interest. The limit of such phenomenon is “cure all disease”, and clearly this is not solving that.

What are you talking about? "the phenomenon of interest"? There is nothing you wrote in either comment that makes sense. What is a "dataset" that has been "solved" and what did the program do that 'solved' it?

MNIST (the number classification task) has been “solved” a billion times and it is hard to imagine any subsequent advances there as scores using a variety of methods have hit the saturation point of accuracy. Any further improvements are likely overfitting to noise. Therefore, we know that it is easy to detect handwritten numbers. However, we may not know how to detect other things as well, like reading an MRI. Those datasets/tasks are clearly different and require different techniques. Training an LLM is likewise different.