Genomics initiative lead at @GoogleDeepMind. Models from our team: Enformer, AlphaMissense, and AlphaGenome.

Joined December 2015
Excited to release AlphaGenome Atlas 🧬 We used AlphaGenome to predict the regulatory impact of all 9B possible SNVs in the human genome. We collaborated with amazing scientists to analyze and apply it, and developed a portal to browse the genome using this new lens 🔬 🌐 Portal: alphagenome.google/atlas 📖 Blog: goo.gle/4heuCvn 📄 Preprint: deepmind.google/blog/alphage… 🧵 1/6
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
We are offering 10,000 scientists the highest usage tier in Google Antigravity free of charge for 6 months. Please apply! forms.gle/WvmBbPvRbpKG1BPn9
Gemini 4 Argon is now globally available. Built to solve your hardest problems from start to finish, the model brings frontier capabilities across coding, enterprise workflows, and cyber defense.
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
The most important thing we can apply AI to is improving medicine and human health - very excited about this partnership with the CZI and the Virtual Biology Initiative!
Today, Isomorphic Labs joins the Virtual Biology Initiative (VBI) as a founding member. We are helping build an open resource for the global research community to accelerate how we understand and treat disease. Read more here: isomorphiclabs.com/articles/…
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Very excited that we are joining the Virtual Biology Initiative. Generating data at large scale is critically important for many types of predictive models and applications. This level of funding will definitely move the needle on model performance. Looking forward to working with the scientific community to shape the experimental design.
Building predictive biology models is one of the most important scientific challenges of our time, but solving this requires new experimental biological data at an unprecedented scale. I’m pleased to announce that @GoogleDeepmind is partnering with @ChanZuckerberg’s Virtual Biology Initiative to create the multi-modal datasets needed for improved predictive biology models. I wrote recently about the need to discover how life works at many different scales, from DNA and individual proteins to living cells and whole-body health. As we learnt from AlphaFold and the Protein Data Bank, solving grand biological challenges will not be possible without high-quality open data and efforts like the @czbiohub initiative. Read the announcement here: biohub.org/news/virtual-biol… And my previous essay here: linkedin.com/pulse/understan… @AllenInstitute, @BroadInstitute, @GladstoneInst, @humancellatlas, @ProteinAtlas, @sangerinstitute, @IsomorphicLabs, @Meta
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
Introducing AlphaProtein Novo, a pipeline for de novo enzyme design! In collaboration with @francesarnold's group, we developed AP Novo and used it to get SoTA "novel-scaffold" activity on 2 benchmark reactions and create enzymes to synthesize the pharmaceutical motif piperidine and degrade the environmental toxin DEHP. Work led by @ZvxyWu @ZiqiLi0513 with teammates @alexechu_ @kelly_ruijie @schulluc @jacobjinkelly @rosaliags @davidla @solserpens @j_reisenbauer, @pengliu_group, Josh, Thomas, Amy, Tristan, Harshnira, and others. It was a joy and privilege to work with you all! Preprints and code: biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… github.com/google-deepmind/a…
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
Happy to see our open source interpretation tools (released pre pre-print/publication) for deep learning regulatory sequence models being used by others to create such fantastic resources. Listing a few pointers below for others interested. 1/
1/5 🧬 Today, our team @GoogleDeepMind is taking another step on our mission of deciphering the genome. We are releasing AlphaGenome Atlas, a massive (petabyte-scale) resource containing AlphaGenome predictions for every possible single-letter DNA change in the human genome — 9 billion in total. deepmind.google/blog/alphage…
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
Excited to be a part of this collaboration! The AlphaGenome Atlas will be a huge accelerant in our field for understanding regulatory encoding.
Excited to release AlphaGenome Atlas 🧬 We used AlphaGenome to predict the regulatory impact of all 9B possible SNVs in the human genome. We collaborated with amazing scientists to analyze and apply it, and developed a portal to browse the genome using this new lens 🔬 🌐 Portal: alphagenome.google/atlas 📖 Blog: goo.gle/4heuCvn 📄 Preprint: deepmind.google/blog/alphage… 🧵 1/6
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Happy to have contributed to this work! Amazing to see cis-regulatory motif maps across so many cell types readily available. Get a bird’s eye view of the cis-regulatory code or dive in deep into specific details, I highly recommend it!
Excited to release AlphaGenome Atlas 🧬 We used AlphaGenome to predict the regulatory impact of all 9B possible SNVs in the human genome. We collaborated with amazing scientists to analyze and apply it, and developed a portal to browse the genome using this new lens 🔬 🌐 Portal: alphagenome.google/atlas 📖 Blog: goo.gle/4heuCvn 📄 Preprint: deepmind.google/blog/alphage… 🧵 1/6
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correct link to the preprint: storage.googleapis.com/deepm…
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
Prioritizing and interpreting disease-associated genetic variants remains one of the greatest challenges in human genetics. Today, we’re thrilled to introduce AlphaGenome Atlas 🧬, a genome-wide platform providing precomputed predictions for the regulatory effects of all ~9 billion possible single-letter changes and >100M observed indels in the human genome. Here is what Atlas delivers: 1. Variant Prioritization via AVI To prioritize variants, we developed the AlphaGenome Variant Impact (AVI) score. AVI predicts a unified score per variant, where higher values indicate greater disruption. It achieves state-of-the-art performance across diverse benchmarks. As a proof-of-concept with our collaborators at @broadinstitute, AVI prioritized a deep-intronic variant in DNM1, helping solve a previously unexplained rare epileptic encephalopathy case by revealing a brain-specific cryptic splice site.   2. Multi-Layer Molecular Interpretation Variant prioritization is only half the battle; researchers also need to understand why a variant matters. Atlas decomposes variant effects across multiple interpretable layers: •Feature Attributions which decompose each variant’s score into specific biological modalities driving the impact.  •Cell-Type Specificity: Precomputed predictions with AlphaGenome across hundreds of biosamples reveal the exact cellular context in which a variant acts.  •Regulatory Grammar: Over 2,600 de novo DNA motifs (and >250B genome-wide instances) show when variants directly disrupt critical regulatory binding "words".   Explore the resource: 🌐 Interactive browser & precomputed data: alphagenome.google/atlas - 🎥 Video: youtu.be/U0aToL5C-bQ - 📖 Blog: goo.gle/4heuCvn - 📄 Preprint: storage.googleapis.com/deepm…
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We’re launching AlphaGenome Atlas: an AI-powered searchable database mapping the predicted impact of all 9 billion possible single-letter DNA changes. Here’s how it could help researchers better understand our biology 🧵
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
AlphaGenome Atlas is an interactive resource, mapping the predicted impact of all 9 billion DNA variants. It works in a regular web browser, without any coding required, and is free for academic researchers. Excited for the discoveries to come.
We’re launching AlphaGenome Atlas: an AI-powered searchable database mapping the predicted impact of all 9 billion possible single-letter DNA changes. Here’s how it could help researchers better understand our biology 🧵
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
1/5 🧬 Today, our team @GoogleDeepMind is taking another step on our mission of deciphering the genome. We are releasing AlphaGenome Atlas, a massive (petabyte-scale) resource containing AlphaGenome predictions for every possible single-letter DNA change in the human genome — 9 billion in total. deepmind.google/blog/alphage…
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These 4 interlinked resources (AG predictions, the AVI score, feature attributions, and the motif compendium) enable the joint prioritization and interpretation of genetic variants. But they become even more powerful when AI agents can use them! To help unlock that, we are also releasing an agent skill. Check out the video below to see the skill in action with Google Antigravity! 🤖👇 youtube.com/watch?v=b2qw3rDN… 5/6
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Congratulations and a huge thank you to the amazing team and collaborators who made this possible! AlphaGenome Atlas is available today via our portal, API, Google Antigravity, and coming to @GoogleCloud soon! → goo.gle/4heuCvn 6/6
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Žiga Avsec retweeted
Very excited to announce ENCODE GRAMMAR (Genomic Regulatory Atlas of sequence Models, Motifs, Annotations & Rules): 3,865 experiment-specific deep learning model sets and sequence annotations for decoding human regulatory DNA. 1/
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