Model reference · open weights

ankh3-large

Embeddings ElnaggarLab Embeddings 1 build Non-commercial 528 dl/mo

ankh3-large is an open-weight embedding model from ElnaggarLab. ankh3-large (BF16) weighs 7.5 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • ankh3-large is a protein language model developed by ElnaggarLab for feature extraction tasks.
  • It uses a multi-task pre-training strategy that combines masked language modeling with protein sequence completion to generate robust protein representations.
  • The model is available under the cc-by-nc-sa-4.0 license.

Summary of the ElnaggarLab/ankh3-large model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byElnaggarLab
Released2024-09-29
VRAM7.5 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for ankh3-large (BF16)

7.5 GBweights, file size
1.1 GBruntime overhead
CardRunsMemory
RTX 3060 12 GBfits11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBfits15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

From the model card

What ElnaggarLab says about ankh3-large

Read the model card

The model was presented in the paper Ankh3: Multi-Task Pretraining with Sequence Denoising and Completion Enhances Protein Representations.

Paper abstract

The abstract of the paper is the following:

Protein language models (PLMs) have emerged as powerful tools to detect complex patterns of protein sequences. However, the capability of PLMs to fully capture information on protein sequences might be limited by focusing on single pre-training tasks. Although adding data modalities or supervised objectives can improve the performance of PLMs, pre-training often remains focused on denoising corrupted sequences. To push the boundaries of PLMs, our research investigated a multi-task pre-training strategy. We developed Ankh3, a model jointly optimized on two objectives: masked language modeling with multiple masking probabilities and protein sequence completion relying only on protein sequences as input. This multi-task pre-training demonstrated that PLMs can learn richer and more generalizable representations solely from protein sequences. The results demonstrated improved performance in downstream tasks, such as secondary structure prediction, fluorescence, GB1 fitness, and contact prediction. The integration of multiple tasks gave the model a more comprehensive understanding of protein properties, leading to more robust and accurate predictions.

Model Details:

Ankh3 is a protein language model that is jointly optimized on two objectives:

  • Masked language modeling with multiple masking probabilities
  • Protein sequence completion.

This is the model of the paper Ankh3: Multi-Task Pretraining with Sequence Denoising and Completion Enhances Protein Representations.

Code: https://github.com/agemagician/Ankh

  1. Masked Language Modeling:
  • The idea of this task is to intentionally 'corrupt' an input protein sequence by masking a certain percentage (X%) of its individual tokens (amino acids), and then train the model to reconstruct the original sequence.

  • Example on a protein sequence before and after corruption:

    Original protein sequence: MKAYVLINSRGP

    This sequence will be masked/corrupted using sentinel tokens as shown below: Sequence after corruption: M A Y L I S R G

    The decoder learns to correspond each sentinel token to the actual amino acid that was masked. In this example: K means that corresponds to the "K" amino acid and so on.

    Decoder output: K V N P

  1. Protein Sequence Completion:
  • The idea of this task is to cut the input sequence into two segments, where the first segment is fed to the encoder and the decoder is tasked to auto-regressively generate the second segment conditioned on the first segment representation outputted from the encoder.

  • Example on protein sequence completion:

    Original sequence: MKAYVLINSRGP

    We will pass "MKAYVL" of it to the encoder, and the decoder is trained that given the representation of the first part provided by the encoder, it should output the second part which is: "INSRGP"

How to use:

For Embedding Extraction:

from transformers import T5ForConditionalGeneration, T5Tokenizer, T5EncoderModel
import torch

# Random sequence from uniprot, most likely Ankh3 saw it during pre-training.
sequence = "MDTAYPREDTRAPTPSKAGAHTALTLGAPHPPPRDHLIWSVFSTLYLNLCCLGFLALAYSIKARDQKVVGDLEAARRFGSKAKCYNILAAMWTLVPPLLLLGLVVTGALHLARLAKDSAAFFSTKFDDADYD"

ckpt = "ElnaggarLab/ankh3-large"

# Make sure that you must use `T5Tokenizer` not `AutoTokenizer`.
tokenizer = T5Tokenizer.from_pretrained(ckpt)

# To use the encoder representation using the NLU prefix:
encoder_model = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(ckpt).eval()

# For extracting embeddings, consider trying the '[S2S]' prefix.
# Since this prefix was specifically used to denote sequence completion
# during the model's pre-training, its use can sometimes
# lead to improved embedding quality.

nlu_sequence = "[NLU]" + sequence
encoded_nlu_sequence = tokenizer(nlu_sequence, add_special_tokens=True, return_tensors="pt", is_split_into_words=False)

with torch.no_grad():
  embedding = encoder_model(**encoded_nlu_sequence)

For Sequence Completion:

from transformers import T5ForConditionalGeneration, T5Tokenizer
from transformers.generation import GenerationConfig
import torch

sequence = "MDTAYPREDTRAPTPSKAGAHTALTLGAPHPPPRDHLIWSVFSTLYLNLCCLGFLALAYSIKARDQKVVGDLEAARRFGSKAKCYNILAAMWTLVPPLLLLGLVVTGALHLARLAKDSAAFFSTKFDDADYD"

ckpt = "ElnaggarLab/ankh3-large"
tokenizer = T5Tokenizer.from_pretrained(ckpt)
# To use the sequence to sequence task using the S2S prefix:
model = T5ForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained(ckpt).eval()

half_length = int(len(sequence) * 0.5)
s2s_sequence = "[S2S]" + sequence[:half_length]
encoded_s2s_sequence = tokenizer(s2s_sequence, add_special_tokens=True, return_tensors="pt", is_split_into_words=False)
# + 1 to account for the start of sequence token.
gen_config = GenerationConfig(min_length=half_length + 1, max_length=half_length + 1, do_sample=False, num_beams=1)
generated_sequence = model.generate(encoded_s2s_sequence["input_ids"], gen_config, )
predicted_sequence = sequence[:half_length] + tokenizer.batch_decode(generated_sequence)[0]

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

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