English

CryoNet.Refine: A One-step Diffusion Model for Rapid Refinement of Structural Models with Cryo-EM Density Map Restraints

Biomolecules 2026-03-10 v2 Artificial Intelligence Image and Video Processing Quantitative Methods

Abstract

High-resolution structure determination by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) requires the accurate fitting of an atomic model into an experimental density map. Traditional refinement pipelines such as Phenix.real_space_refine and Rosetta are computationally expensive, demand extensive manual tuning, and present a significant bottleneck for researchers. We present CryoNet.Refine, an end-to-end deep learning framework that automates and accelerates molecular structure refinement. Our approach utilizes a one-step diffusion model that integrates a density-aware loss function with robust stereochemical restraints, enabling rapid optimization of a structure against experimental data. CryoNet.Refine provides a unified and versatile solution capable of refining protein complexes as well as DNA/RNA-protein complexes. In benchmarks against Phenix.real_space_refine, CryoNet.Refine consistently achieves substantial improvements in both model-map correlation and overall geometric quality metrics. By offering a scalable, automated, and powerful alternative, CryoNet.Refine aims to serve as an essential tool for next-generation cryo-EM structure refinement. Web server: https://cryonet.ai/refine; Source code: https://github.com/kuixu/cryonet.refine.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.22263,
  title  = {CryoNet.Refine: A One-step Diffusion Model for Rapid Refinement of Structural Models with Cryo-EM Density Map Restraints},
  author = {Fuyao Huang and Xiaozhu Yu and Kui Xu and Qiangfeng Cliff Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.22263},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Published as a conference paper at ICLR 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:52:41.073Z