Transformers enable accurate prediction of acute and chronic chemical toxicity in aquatic organisms

Sci Adv. 2024 Mar 8;10(10):eadk6669. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk6669. Epub 2024 Mar 6.

Abstract

Environmental hazard assessments are reliant on toxicity data that cover multiple organism groups. Generating experimental toxicity data is, however, resource-intensive and time-consuming. Computational methods are fast and cost-efficient alternatives, but the low accuracy and narrow applicability domains have made their adaptation slow. Here, we present a AI-based model for predicting chemical toxicity. The model uses transformers to capture toxicity-specific features directly from the chemical structures and deep neural networks to predict effect concentrations. The model showed high predictive performance for all tested organism groups-algae, aquatic invertebrates and fish-and has, in comparison to commonly used QSAR methods, a larger applicability domain and a considerably lower error. When the model was trained on data with multiple effect concentrations (EC50/EC10), the performance was further improved. We conclude that deep learning and transformers have the potential to markedly advance computational prediction of chemical toxicity.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Aquatic Organisms*
  • Electric Power Supplies*
  • Neural Networks, Computer