Authors
Zhao, M., Kumar, S.
Abstract
Coding mutations within intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of proteins are increasingly implicated in human diseases yet remain poorly interpreted by conventional variant-effect predictors that rely on structural stability and conservation-based metrics. Quantifying disruption of IDR-mediated liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) offers a biophysically principled approach to interpreting the pathogenic impact of such variants. However, existing LLPS predictors suffer from training biases toward self-separating proteins, show limited performance on partner-dependent phase separation, and often lack interpretability for variant prioritization. We present an interpretable ensemble machine-learning framework that integrates protein language model embeddings of sequence and predicted structure to predict LLPS propensity and classify proteins as self-separating or partner-dependent. Our two-step classifiers outperform existing methods on independent benchmark datasets, with the largest gains for partner-dependent LLPS proteins. Beyond classification, our framework identifies critical phase-separating regions and quantifies mutation-induced perturbations in LLPS. Applied to disease-associated variant databases, we found that pathogenic mutations are enriched in predicted phase-separating regions and frequently perturb LLPS propensity scores, implicating mutation-induced LLPS dysregulation as a potential pathogenic mechanism for numerous diseases. Overall, our framework provides an accurate, interpretable approach for identifying phase-separating proteins and linking aberrant phase-separation behavior to disease pathogenesis.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 21 Jul 2026.
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