AlphaFast: High-throughput AlphaFold 3 via GPU-accelerated MSA construction

AlphaFold 3 (AF3) enables accurate biomolecular modeling but is limited by slow, CPU-bound multiple sequence alignment (MSA) generation. We introduce AlphaFast, a drop-in framework that integrates GPU-accelerated MMseqs2 sequence search to remove this bottleneck. AlphaFast achieves a 68.5× speedup in MSA construction and a 22.8× reduction in end-to-end runtime on a single GPU, and delivers predictions in 8 seconds per input on four GPUs while maintaining indistinguishable structural accuracy. A serverless deployment enables structure prediction for as little as $0.035 per input. Code is available at https://github.com/RomeroLab/alphafast.

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Publication Details

Journal
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Published
2026-02-18
DOI
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.17.706409
Primary Topic
Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

AlphaFast: High-throughput AlphaFold 3 via GPU-accelerated MSA construction

Benjamin Perry, Philip A. Romero, J Kim
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
article

AlphaFast: High-throughput AlphaFold 3 via GPU-accelerated MSA construction

Benjamin Perry, Philip A. Romero, J Kim
article en

Abstract

AlphaFold 3 (AF3) enables accurate biomolecular modeling but is limited by slow, CPU-bound multiple sequence alignment (MSA) generation. We introduce AlphaFast, a drop-in framework that integrates GPU-accelerated MMseqs2 sequence search to remove this bottleneck. AlphaFast achieves a 68.5× speedup in MSA construction and a 22.8× reduction in end-to-end runtime on a single GPU, and delivers predictions in 8 seconds per input on four GPUs while maintaining indistinguishable structural accuracy. A serverless deployment enables structure prediction for as little as $0.035 per input. Code is available at https://github.com/RomeroLab/alphafast.

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Duke University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 51%
Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
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AlphaFast: High-throughput AlphaFold 3 via GPU-accelerated MSA construction — Benjamin Perry, Philip A. Romero, et al. · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS