Conditional Diffusion Model with Locality-Aware Modal Alignment Generates Diverse Protein Conformational Ensembles

Summary

A paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence on February 25, 2026 introduces a conditional diffusion model incorporating locality-aware modal alignment for generating diverse protein conformational ensembles. The method addresses a key challenge in computational biology: predicting not just a single protein structure but the range of conformations a protein can adopt, which is critical for understanding protein function and drug design. The study benchmarks against eight state-of-the-art ge