Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165
We built an end-to-end protein AI pipeline covering structure prediction, sequence design, and codon optimization. After comparing multiple transformer architectures for codon-level language modeling, CodonRoBERTa-large-v2 emerged as the clear winner with a perplexity of 4.10 and a Spearman CAI correlation of 0.40, significantly outperforming ModernBERT. We then scaled to 25 species, trained 4 production models in 55 GPU-hours, and built a species-conditioned system that no other open-source project offers. Complete results, architectural decisions, and runnable code below.
We annotated 119K medical images with two frontier VLMs (Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5), cross-validated at 93% agreement, and produced 110K training records, all for under $500. Fine-tuning 3 small models (2-3B params) improved all benchmarks: best model reaches +15.0% average exact match.
Everything is open-sourced: datasets, adapters, and code.
Introducing Unsloth Studio β¨ A new open-source web UI to train and run LLMs.
β’ Run models locally on Mac, Windows, Linux β’ Train 500+ models 2x faster with 70% less VRAM β’ Supports GGUF, vision, audio, embedding models β’ Auto-create datasets from PDF, CSV, DOCX β’ Self-healing tool calling and code execution β’ Compare models side by side + export to GGUF
We collaborated with NVIDIA to teach you about Reinforcement Learning and RL environments. π Learn:
β’ Why RL environments matter + how to build them β’ When RL is better than SFT β’ GRPO and RL best practices β’ How verifiable rewards and RLVR work
DNA, mRNA, proteins, AI. I spent the last year going deep into computational biology as an ML engineer. This is Part I of what I found. π§¬
In 2024, AlphaFold won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
By 2026, the open-source community had built alternatives that outperform it.
That's the story I find most interesting about protein AI right now. Not just the science (which is incredible), but the speed at which open-source caught up. Multiple teams, independently, reproduced and then exceeded AlphaFold 3's accuracy with permissive licenses. The field went from prediction to generation: we're not just modeling known proteins anymore, we're designing new ones.
I spent months mapping this landscape for ML engineers. What the architectures actually are (spoiler: transformers and diffusion models), which tools to use for what, and which ones you can actually ship commercially.